Does LED retrofit lamps hurt your eyes even when not directly looking at it?

[Flurofan96]

Hey everyone, FF96 here

Back in the summer at my Aunt's house for my uncles Bday meetup, their house had their lighting upgraded from CFL to LED lamps from candle to GLS shaped (using basic SMD diodes) and later on in the evening when everyone was in the lounge the ceiling fixture that used 2x candle half bodied and one coated GLS half bodied lamp was switched on and whilst I was on the laptop I asked to turn off the main ceiling fixture because my eyes were stinging a little. Luckily there were a couple of wall fixtures so they were used instead!

Does anyone experience that with LED GLS and candle lamps?

[FrontSideBus]

Probably because the drivers they are using aren’t smoothing the output.
LED is generally harsher light anyway to my eyes...

[AngryHorse]

Can’t say any of us do in our house, and I have them all over!, my two Megamans in the bathroom are quite powerful, but then I like a bright bathroom

[Slyspark]

Some of the cheap lamps produce a noticeable flicker, others slightly less so, but flickering lights are always annoying and can cause eye strain. Also, given how bright some of these things are, without any sort of shade, the glare from them can also hurt your eyes!

[Ash]

When its not the glare its the spectrum, and that is bad even with lamps which otherwise have decent optics and color (both retrofit and LED-designed lamps)

It's the sort of light that appears "good" at first glance, that is it appears to render colors and such, but in fact is everything but

[Slyspark]

Can get quite a bit of UV out of some LED's too, just watch stuff that's white glow under them!

[Ash]

Nope, the visible Blue is sufficient for some materials to fluoresce. It's Fluorescents that put out enough UV to destroy diffusers and Plastic luminaire components that see the tubes from up close

But...! The quantity of UV put out by Fluorescents is by far less than what you get from plain Sun light, for the same visible light levels. For the amount of Sun light that enters the room through a window (not talking direct outdoor Sun in excess of 100K Lux), there are only positive health effects

The quantity of Blue near 450nm in LED light however, exceeds that of Sun light (Sun spectrum is fairly uniform throughout the visible spectrum) for the same overall light level. Our eyes were never meant to handle this amount of Blue concentrated in a single wavelength. It plainly murders the cones (which results in the same feeling of glare for who's sensitive to it, but some interpret it as "bright light, well lit area" instead)