Recent reports by mainstream Chinese media CCTV that LEDs without diffusers causing blindness within 10 seconds has generated much talk in China, but a report by U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) claim LEDs are not particularly harmful compared to other conventional light sources when it comes to nonvisual applications. 

The DOE report noted LEDs are capable of being engineered to customize lighting to a particular color range, which gives it greater design versatility and opportunities compared to conventional lighting. 

When designing LED products “an important consideration is that LEDs emit no more short-wavelength (blue) energy than other sources at the same correlated color temperature (CCT). That is, even though most LEDs have a peak in their emission around 450 nm, in order to have the same CCT they emit less energy than other comparable-CCT light sources in the regions above and below 450 nm. LEDs are not inherently more hazardous (or beneficial) to human health than any other light source.”

The report noted it was still too early to say for sure how LED applications in health, such as Seasonal Affective Disorder treatment will impact human health, but pointed out the trend of LED in health applications cannot be ignored by the industry for long.