Category: Blue light

Talking about color temperature raises everyone’s temperature

Should Ivins increase the permitted color temperature for outdoor lights from 2200K for city streetlights, city bollards, and new commercial and 2700K for new residential properties to 4000K for everything? Should Ivins treat all new commercial, new residential, and city streetlights the same or set separate color temperatures for each of these three uses: streetlights and bollards, new commercial properties, and new residential?

People opposed to colder, whiter 4000K lights express concerns about glare and harshness. People opposed to the warmer light from 2000K – 2700K lights express concerns about safety. Safety is important. But a discussion about safety should be based on standards rather than arbitrary opinions. Research by Kathy Barth shows that Ivins is not less safe than other areas.

What does color temperature look like in real life?

We used a professional spectrometer to measure the color temperature of commercial lights in Ivins so we can visualize what the numbers “look like” in real life. I won’t bore you with the dozens of readings we took from around the city.

Instead, an easy side-by-side comparison of the two extremes is Rocky Vista University and the Crimson Cliffs Student Housing next door. Rocky Vista University’s parking lot lights are 4000K LEDs but have amber filters which lowers the color temperature to approximately 2200K. The Crimson Cliffs Student Housing parking lot lights are unfiltered 4000K LEDs.

Amber filters used in Ivins City streetlights and bollards and installed at Rocky Vista University

Other commercial properties have lights near 2200K even though they were added when 4000K was allowed. And others have 4000K lights, which were allowed when they were put in and continue to be allowed, or grandfathered, regardless of changes to the Lighting Ordinance.

50 years of peace and then…

Everything was fine in Ivins for decades. Problems started appearing about four years ago.

  • 1970 – 2017: High-pressure sodium (HPS) lights were used for streetlights and parking lots. Their color temperature is approximately 1900K.
  • ­2017: Ivins started replacing HPS streetlights with 4000K LEDs. The Lighting Ordinance permitted color temperatures up to 4000K. There were a lot of complaints. Solution: The City added amber filters, reducing the color temperature to approximately 2200K.
  • 2019: Rocky Vista University had 4000K parking lot lights. Neighbors complained about the harsh white light and glare. Solution: The University approved adding filters, paid for and installed by local residents, reducing the color temperature to about 2200K. 
  • 2019: Because of the problems encountered in the prior couple of years, the City changed the Lighting Ordinance, lowering outdoor lighting color temperatures, for new construction only, to 2200K for commercial and 2700K for residential properties.

Placement versus intensity

When the filters were added at Rocky Vista University, a couple of areas were not illuminated ideally. But these same areas were a problem before adding the filters because pole placement was not ideal. Determining appropriate placement for lighting is just as important for ensuring safety, if not more so. So maybe the safety issue is really about the proper placement of lighting rather than the intensification of light.

So what’s the big deal?

Ivins is blessed to have Red Mountain block light from any source along its entire northern border. Increasing the color temperature to 4000K interferes with the beautiful dark skies we have now.  Past installations of 4000K lights resulted in an outcry to lower the harsh, glaring white light. Why repeat past mistakes?

The population of Ivins doubled since 2000 and is expected to double again in just over 20 years. What will our night sky look like with twice the light pollution we have today? Will there be nothing left to see for our children to be inspired by, marvel at, and cherish? Will the wonderment of the night sky be just a distant faded memory for those of us who were once lucky enough to gaze upon it? We can’t let that become our fate.

Rocky Vista University installs anti-glare shields and blue light filters

We just installed anti-glare shields and blue light filters on 8 parking lot lights at Rocky Vista University College of Osteopathic Medicine.

This demonstration project is a study the University is conducting, sponsored by the Ivins Night Sky Initiative, to see if the shields and filters can be effectively retrofitted into existing lighting to reduce glare and blue light emissions while meeting the university’s need to provide nighttime safety for their students.

The new anti-glare shields and blue light filters
This nighttime view shows the glare reduction provided by the new shields on the pole at the left compared to the light pole at right which doesn’t have the anti-glare shield.

Glare

The City has long required outdoor lighting to be fully shielded, meaning light fixtures can’t aim light up into the sky. But even fully shielded fixtures send light out horizontally as well as down. That not only wastes light by sending it where it isn’t needed, it creates a glare problem.

Our technical Committee came up with a way to reduce glare significantly while still providing adequate lighting where it’s needed; on the ground.

This is a screenshot of one of the Technical Committee’s analysis to determine the appropriate design for an anti-glare shield
The new anti-glare shield (top) mounted to one of the University’s fixtures

Blue light

LED lighting is quickly replacing High Pressure Sodium lights and other older technologies because LEDs are so much more energy efficient. You can easily spot the difference. The older technologies produce a softer, warmer, more comfortable light compared to the bright white light from LEDs. That’s because LEDs emit a lot of blue light while the older technologies emit very little, if any blue light.

Blue light rays have short wavelengths just above ultraviolet light. We’ve known for a long time that ultraviolet light can be harmful. It can burn. That’s why we wear sunscreen. We’re learning that too much blue light can also be harmful.

  • The blue part of the light spectrum is responsible for creating most of the glare we see. Glare constricts your pupils, diminishing your eyes’ ability to adapt to low-light conditions, like nighttime.
  • Scientists are just beginning to understand the negative impacts on health, including blue light’s contribution to cardiovascular disease, sleep, metabolic and immunological disorders, obesity, cancer, macular degeneration, glaucoma, and more.
  • And blue light is disruptive to plants, animals, crop pollination, and on and on.

Blue light filters

Ivins City has found a way to use LED technology but take out most of the blue light. That eliminates the added health and safety risks from LEDs compared to older technologies and results in a warmer, more pleasing light.

The University’s study will help others determine the feasibility of retrofitting their own lighting to reduce blue light and glare. It will also help the city in its efforts to get designated as a Dark Sky Community by the International Dark Sky Association.

Ivins & Rocky Vista University College of Osteopathic Medicine Take the Lead in Improving Nighttime Health & Safety

The Ivins City Council took groundbreaking action this evening on what we believe to be the lead nationally in dramatically improving nighttime health and safety for Ivins residents with changes to its outdoor lighting ordinance.

The Ivins City Council gets an overview of the recommendations for changes to the city’s Outdoor Lighting Ordinance from Mike Scott with the Ivins Night Sky Initiative.

The city now requires that the maximum color temperature for all new outdoor non-residential lighting is 3,000 degrees Kelvin, down from 4,000. But more importantly, these new lights will be required to add amber filters the city designed that effectively reduces the color temperature to about 2,200 degrees Kelvin, eliminating almost all the blue light emitted by LEDs that creates safety and health problems. Outdoor lighting for new residential development will be limited to no more than 2,700 degrees Kelvin.

Rocky Vista University College of Osteopathic Medicine (RVUCOM) is going even further.

The city’s new requirements only affect new construction, but RVUCOM has begun a study sponsored by the Ivins Night Sky Initiative to see if these new requirements can be effectively retrofitted into existing lighting while continuing to meet the university’s need to provide nighttime safety for their students. The study will also look for a solution to another problem magnified by LEDs: unwanted glare.

Rocky Vista University College of Osteopathic Medicine’s Ivins campus.

The City has long required outdoor lighting to be fully shielded, meaning light fixtures can’t aim light up into the sky. But even fully shielded fixtures send light out horizontally as well as down. That not only wastes light by sending it where it isn’t needed, it creates a glare problem.

RVUCOM’s study will help others determine the feasibility of retrofitting their own lighting to reduce blue light and glare. It will also help the city in its efforts to get designated as a Dark Sky Community by the International Dark Sky Association.

What’s the big deal?

LED lighting is quickly replacing High Pressure Sodium lights and other older technologies because LEDs are so much more energy efficient. You can easily spot the difference. The older technologies produce a softer, warmer, more comfortable light compared to the bright white light from LEDs. That’s because LEDs emit a lot of blue light while the older technologies emit very little, if any blue light.

Blue light rays have short wavelengths just above ultraviolet light. We’ve known for a long time that ultraviolet light can be harmful. It can burn. That’s why we wear sunscreen. We’re learning that too much blue light can also be harmful.

  • The blue part of the light spectrum is responsible for creating most of the glare we see. Glare constricts your pupils, diminishing your eyes’ ability to adapt to low-light conditions, like nighttime.
  • Scientists are just beginning to understand the negative impacts on health, including blue light’s contribution to cardiovascular disease, sleep, metabolic and immunological disorders, obesity, cancer, macular degeneration, glaucoma, and more.
  • And blue light is disruptive to plants, animals, crop pollination, and on and on.

How does the Ivins solution work?

Ivins City has found a way to use LED technology but take out most of the blue light. That eliminates the added health and safety risks from LEDs compared to older technologies and results in a warmer, more pleasing light.

Wilson Jimenez, the Ivins City employee who came up with the filter, finishes installing the prototype anti-glare shield on a light fixture for Rocky Vista University along with the three anti-blue spectrum filters.
Alan Koharcheck and Tim Povlick, members of the Ivins Night Sky Initiative, in the City’s shop with Wilson Jimenez making a final check of the prototype before unveiling it to the University.
Ivins Mayor Chris Hart shows the finished prototype to Kristine Jenkins , Rocky Vista University’s Director of Campus Operations and Terry Meyer, Manager of Public Safety and Security.
Tim Povlick, a member of the Ivins Night Sky Initiative’s Technical Committee, tests the finished prottype anti-glare shield.

For more information about the progress of this study, blue light health and safety issues, or other information about outdoor lighting, contact us or visit their website at IvinsNightSky.org. The Ivins Night Sky Initiative is a 100% volunteer, not for profit, 501(c)(3) tax-exempt, citizen organization. Also visit the International Dark Sky Association’s website at www.darksky.org.  For more information regarding Rocky Vista University College of Osteopathic Medicine please visit the website at http://www.rvu.edu/.

Add your comments

Please post your comments using the form at the bottom of this article. We would like to get your views about this article and about our Initiative.

Join us

Let us know if this Initiative is important to you, if you are willing to get involved, and what else you think we should be doing to improve, preserve, and protect the night skies in Ivins.

Just because we have submitted recommendations for changes to the city’s Outdoor Lighting Ordinance doesn’t mean we’re done. Far from it. Seriously, far from it! We can really use your talent and energy to make our Initiative’s vision and goals a reality.

Email us and we will get back to you right away.

A simple fix to sleep better

Reading an interesting book at bedtime is a time honored method of falling asleep. With the advent of LED reading lights  a problem has cropped up due to the blue light content of LED’s, which reduces the feeling of sleepiness. This is a relatively new problem, because the old-fashioned incandescent bulbs we grew up with emit much less blue light.

The white light you see from your LED light is actually a combination of blue, green, and red light. When you buy an LED, look for the “color temperature” or CCT on the package. These graphs show the light spectrum from three LEDs with color temperatures ranging from 2700K to 4000K. The lower the color temperature, the “warmer” the light and the less blue it emits. Buy LEDs with the lowest color temperature you can find. Even then, there’s still a lot of blue light compared to old technologies like incandescent bulbs.

Recent research shows the blue light that is prevalent in LEDs disrupts the sleep cycle. Blue light leads to a reduction in the production of melatonin, an important hormone for restful sleep. For more information about LEDs and blue light, see our video article, The hidden danger of white light: Blue.

Reading before going to sleep is restful but the LED light I’m using is disruptive. So what can I do? Glad you asked. A couple of members of our Ivins Night Sky Initiative have a solution. Tim Povlick and Lois Diehl added a simple filter to their reading lights, cutting out almost all of the blue light. More about the filter later.

Tim and Lois providing education about lighting at our information booth during the Kayenta Street Painting Festival

In this example the LED based reading light had a CCT of approximately 4000K. The device uses 3 AAA batteries and the light resembles a miniature Cobra street light. Here’s what the light looks like before adding the filter and after.

Note: Don’t wrap the filter over lights that get hot

This image shows the lamp illuminating a text book.  Note the white color of the light indicating a large percentage of blue light.

To reduce the blue light a blue blocking filter was used. The material is soft plastic and has an orange color.  The filter is cut to size using scissors and taped to the LED.

Light from the reading lamp now has a soft warm cast and does not interfere with easily falling asleep. This image shows the effects of the filter.

Reading is more relaxing and the slight color cast doesn’t interfere with reading the text. Oh, and if you don’t like the color cast shown in the example above, just try different filter colors. The ones to test range from a light yellow to an amber. Lighter colors mean you will get more blue light, but any reduction in blue is an improvement.

What do I get and where to buy it?

You can get the filters from Adorama (Lee filters UV Blue Blocker). A 24′ x 24″ gel sheet costs $8.69 and is big enough to cover a few lights.

The City is doing it too

The City is doing the same thing on new streetlights. Here’s how the color spectrum changes with the addition of an amber filter. The blue light almost disappears.

Join us

Let us know if this Initiative is important to you, if you are willing to get involved, and what else you think we should be doing to improve, preserve, and protect the night skies in Ivins. We will get back to you as soon as possible.

Summer isn’t stopping the Technical Committee

Our Technical Committee isn’t letting summer get in the way of having fun in shop working on projects. Last month the Committee started working on ideas for incorporating shielding and filters in existing lighting fixtures.

In the past couple of weeks they have started to turn their ideas into reality, buying a contemporary outdoor lighting fixture to dissect and test their ideas.

Technical Committee members transform their ideas from paper to reality and started testing a variety of shielding options this week on an actual outdoor lighting fixture on Tuesday.
Wilson Jimenez set up a portable light pole yesterday for testing the Technical Committee’s work. Here City staff help Wilson with position the pole, now mounted with the lighting fixture and the first filter test.
  • Testing shield angles
  • A mock-up shield and filter
  • Technical Committee in the shop
  • Tim measuring illuminance from mock-up shield and filter design

Let us know if this Initiative is important to you, if you are willing to get involved, and what else you think we should be doing to improve, preserve, and protect the night skies in Ivins. We will get back to you as soon as possible.

Wrong outdoor lighting harms nature and crops

This is one of seven excerpts from a presentation by Marc Deshowitz, Preserving one of our most precious resources… the night sky. This video expands the discussion of health issues beyond light’s negative impact on us to its negative impacts on all of nature.

Here are the titles of the seven video excerpts:

  • Are we losing our heritage of dark skies?
  • The hidden danger in white light: Blue
  • More light doesn’t mean more safe
  • How light pollution increases air pollution
  • Wrong outdoor lighting harms nature and crops
  • Simple outdoor retrofit examples
  • What you can do to improve outdoor lighting

Let us know if this Initiative is important to you, if you are willing to get involved, and what else you think we should be doing to improve, preserve, and protect dark skies in Ivins. We will get back to you as soon as possible.

How light pollution increases air pollution

This is one of seven excerpts from a presentation by Marc Deshowitz, Preserving one of our most precious resources… the night sky. This video shows how light pollution actually contributes to air pollution.

We will post another video excerpt from Marc’s presentation soon. Here are the titles of the seven video excerpts:

  • Are we losing our heritage of dark skies?
  • The hidden danger in white light: Blue
  • More light doesn’t mean more safe
  • How light pollution increases air pollution
  • Outdoor lighting harms nature and crops
  • Simple outdoor retrofit examples
  • What you can do to improve outdoor lighting

Let us know if this Initiative is important to you, if you are willing to get involved, and what else you think we should be doing to improve, preserve, and protect dark skies in Ivins. We will get back to you as soon as possible.

More light doesn’t mean more safe

This is one of seven excerpts from a presentation by Marc Deshowitz, Preserving one of our most precious resources… the night sky. This video dispels the commonly held belief that more light means more safety, not only through practical examples but also from actual research.

We will post another video excerpt from Marc’s presentation soon. Here are the titles of the seven video excerpts:

  • Are we losing our heritage of dark skies?
  • The hidden danger in white light: Blue
  • More light doesn’t mean more safe
  • How light pollution increases air pollutione
  • Outdoor lighting harms nature and crops
  • Simple outdoor retrofit examples
  • What you can do to improve outdoor lighting

Let us know if this Initiative is important to you, if you are willing to get involved, and what else you think we should be doing to improve, preserve, and protect dark skies in Ivins. We will get back to you as soon as possible.

We applaud City Hall’s efforts

The typical LED light emits a lot of blue light which is a health and safety concern. Ivins City is addressing those concerns by adding amber filters to new city-owned outdoor street lights.

Even though the new lights have LEDs with a color temperature of 3000K, which still emits a lot of blue light, our spectrometer readings shown in the graphs below found the filter eliminated almost all of the blue light. Wilson Jimenez, a City employee, came up with the idea for the amber filters and also designed and fabricated them.

In addition, the City is working with members of our Initiative to improve the city’s current outdoor lighting ordinance. Recently, we gave the City Council a series of recommendations which they have sent to their Technical Review Committee to study. From there, the recommendations will go to through the public hearing process.

In addition to adding filters to new City lights, the Mayor supports the mission of the Ivins Night Sky Initiative. Here are some comments he made at an event we sponsored recently.

And the City displays information about the Initiative and brochures about outdoor lighting issues, concerns, and opportunities.

Outdoor lighting brochures available to the public at City Hall.

The hidden danger of white light: Blue

This is one of seven excerpts from a presentation by Marc Deshowitz, Preserving one of our most precious resources… the night sky. This video discusses the major problem the typical LED light has, it emits too much blue light which is both a health and safety hazard.

We will post another excerpt from Marc’s presentation soon. Here are the titles of the seven video excerpts:

  • Are we losing our heritage of dark skies?
  • The hidden danger in white light: Blue
  • How light pollution increases air pollutione
  • Outdoor lighting harms nature and crops
  • Bright white light doesn’t increase safety
  • Simple outdoor retrofit examples
  • What you can do to improve outdoor lighting

Let us know if this Initiative is important to you, if you are willing to get involved, and what else you think we should be doing to improve, preserve, and protect dark skies in Ivins. We will get back to you as soon as possible.