To the Editor:

What is the lighting like in your local public libraries? It’s a more serious consideration than one might expect.

Here, the Greenwich, New York library plans to add LED [light-emitting diode] lighting to “enhance the comfort” of the community space. The opposite will happen.

It’s often startling to people who aren’t quickly troubled by LED light to learn that LEDs cause massive problems for others, but there’s good reason the phrase “asbestos-scale liability” is turning up in lighting-industry news.

Thankfully, the “ban” on the safest, most universally usable kind of lightbulbs — incandescent — was recently reversed. There is no rule that public buildings have to effectively shut the door on anyone who can’t medically tolerate LED lighting.

Many people become instantly ill around LED light, some severely so. They suffer eye and face pain, migraines, nausea, loss of balance, racing heart, disorientation, shakiness, and seizures. Nobody’s brain is designed to process the foreign, non-natural properties of this laser-derived light, but for certain individuals it is acutely toxic, unsafe within seconds or minutes. For people experiencing catastrophic effects like seizures (which can be fatal) LED-lit places are dangerously off-limits. 

Specific aspects of LED light make the light intrusive, powerfully endochrine-disrupting, neuroinflammatory, neurodegenerative and oncogenic  even if dim, or in small amounts like the bit that gets through the bedroom shades at night.

Unhealthy for everyone, outdoor overnight lighting like LED streetlamps is tied to heart disease; diabetes; stroke; obesity; depression; liver disease; kidney damage; cognitive decline; pre-term birth; Alzheimer's (especially in younger people); virus infectivity, mortality and zoonosis (including West Nile and COVID-19); macular degeneration and many cancers: breast, prostate, thyroid (children too), colon, lung, pancreatic and non-Hodgkins lymphoma.

That same bit of light which makes it more likely someone will develop cancer can counteract chemotherapy drugs, so tumors keep growing. Lighting researchers (including from RPI's Lighting Research Center) have known this last fact since 2018, but didn’t do much to alert the public. Light getting in a bedroom also ups the chances breast cancer will metastasize to bones.

Indoors, the electronics in LEDs — not the light itself — are shown to increase body amperage to carcinogenic levels, leading to malignant melanoma in office workers. This doesn’t bode well for LEDs in libraries, schools, hospitals and stores.

Indeed, The International Energy Agency (IEA) warns against using LEDs where “long-term exposure can be foreseen”  —  with “long-term” being about three hours. Outdoor LED lights, even “amber” ones, are extremely damaging to nature too, destroying valuable ecosystem services with devastating and often lethal impacts on wildlife, microbial systems, and vital insect populations.

None of this would surprise the lighting industry. To come up with usage standards and “expert” guidance, they did cursory, in-house testing on small groups of healthy young adults — sometimes their own employees – with no independent oversight. The resulting standards apply only to an average individual in that limited demographic.

Babies, children, the elderly, pregnant women, or people with light-sensitive conditions were left out. Tellingly, these are all high-risk populations for LED-induced harm. These are precisely the ones likeliest to report having adverse reactions now. Usage standards also don’t cover cumulative damage or compounding real-world effects. 

These standards-setting bodies haven’t been exactly forthcoming about their irresponsibly inadequate methods, or about inevitable harm to members of society they neglected to consider. Lighting trade publications, however, plainly admit to the problem:

— “Application guidance, both recommendations and standards, is written based on averages, not individuals. Guidance based on averages will discriminate against some occupants [of the LED-lit space] some or all of the time.” International Commission on Illumination (CIE) 2024;

— “We now recognize, however, that this [guidance and standards-setting] approach excludes much of the population. Any small sample cannot reflect the full range of characteristics of an entire population … As a result, lighting recommendations based on such a limited sample may be unsuitable for the under-represented, meaning that they create an unintended but structural inequity. This inequity can lead to poorer health, safety risks, and poorer quality of life for the under-represented individuals and groups.” CIE 2023;

— “[S]ensitive individuals might react [to LED light exposure] sooner and/or more intensely, or experience more serious consequences such as migraine and photosensitive epileptic seizures. These individuals have no way to identify whether a given location might expose them to conditions that trigger their adverse effects.” IEA 2024;

— “The response to LED light modulation can range from none, to mild annoyance, to catastrophic.” Illuminating Engineering Society webinar with Naomi Miller.

What library director would want LED lighting if they knew it subjects whole segments of society to structural inequity, discrimination, and safety risks? A library wouldn't remove ramps, permit smoking, or serve peanuts at story hour to kids with peanut allergies.

What’s different about keeping some patrons from visiting the library because of literally sickening lights? There's no ban on alternatives. Public libraries should only install lighting that makes the building comfortable and welcoming for everyone in the community.

MarieAnn Cherry

Washington County

New York

Editor’s note: The Enterprise contacted local libraries leaders to ask if their libraries used LEDs and if any concerns had been raised.

Chris Sagaas, executive director of the Upper Hudson Library System, responded on behalf of UHLS members: “Over the last few years, several Upper Hudson Library System member libraries — including the Upper Hudson Library System itself — have installed and now use LEDs. They are more energy-efficient and also reduce utility and upkeep costs. New York State Code also requires that LEDs be part of any new construction. 

“No complaints have been received about the lights. We are concerned whenever people let us know there are impediments to their use of our spaces, and library staff always strive to find a way to provide users with access to their services and resources.”

Yvonne Keller-Baker, the director of the Schoharie Library, which is not part of the UHLS, responded, “The Schoharie Library doesn’t have any LED lighting. We have had an energy study that recommended this change but have not sought grant funding or other funds to make the significant change in our historic building.”