Many LED products on the market today continue to introduce high flicker rates into indoor environments. Even though the human visual threshold is about 50Hz, if a light source is flickering faster than 50 times per second, this stroboscopic flicker can still have a negative impact on health, wellness, and productivity.
Human-Centric Lighting (HCL) aims to enhance the biological health and emotional wellbeing of people through advanced capabilities such as flicker-free, dimmable and color tunable or circadian lighting.
An obvious and persistent hazard of artificial lighting that HCL aims to remove is flicker. Flicker occurs as a result of modulating the current to artificial light sources, in particular fluorescent, which has been the primary lighting choice for classrooms since the 1950s. Flicker has shown to cause headaches, migraine, eye strain or fatigue, particularly for photosensitive individuals or those with scotopic sensitivity syndromes that hamper perceptual processing and reading. With quality LED lighting, flicker can be largely removed, so much so that it could be considered “flicker-free.” UL (Underwriters Laboratories) provides a “Low Optical Flicker” certification to qualify LED lamps and fixtures that “meet optimal flicker thresholds for verifiable lighting comfort,” assuring schools can make lighting choices with optimal flicker performance.
In order to make sure our LED products offer the most extensive health and wellness benefits over conventional lighting we make sure to remove flicker in all of our products. Energy Focus is the creator of the first UL-certified “flicker-free” LED products on the U.S. market.
How Flicker Affects Your Health
- Can induce seizures in people with photosensitive epilepsy
- Can contribute to headaches, eye strain, and fatigue
- Is a visual trigger that studies show can account for 38% of reported migraines
- Can negatively impact individuals with autism due to their visual hypersensitivity, with lighting triggers heightening symptoms
- Can cause stroboscopic effect, which can pose hazards when using fast-moving machinery
How Flicker Affects Your Safety
- In an industrial setting, possible hazard from stroboscopic effect: rotating or translating machinery may look like it’s moving at a different rate
- In nighttime driving, the phantom array effect can distract a driver from seeing important details on or near the roadway
How Flicker Affects Your Electronics
- Flicker may interfere with barcode scanners and video/photography equipment
- FCC & CISPR guidelines for low EMI & RFI could cause disruption to electronic devices and wireless communication (including medical equipment)
- Flicker may produce distortion and electronic pollution that could interfere with medical equipment
- Can render barcode scanners ineffective as scanners won’t function under flickering lights, creating issues for retailers
For more information about Flicker, download our whitepaper or contact us for more information.
