Ever since Thomas Edison successfully commercialized the incandescent lightbulb more than a century ago, artificial lighting has become a critical technology that facilitated the modern civilization through offering sufficient light level for indoor activities. LED lighting then brought financial and sustainability benefits by significantly reducing lighting energy consumption through increasing energy efficiency over the past decade. Now the history of lighting is entering its next age characterized by human-centric lighting (HCL) that is expected to vastly expand the impact of lighting on human health and wellbeing. For schools, that means the most important constituents—students and teachers—will not just be visually receiving lighting but may also benefit from it like never before.

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. It has been gaining recognition since the term first emerged around 2013 as LED and lighting control technologies started to make it possible for commercial applications.

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.

Another significant benefit of HCL is circadian lighting, which alters the color temperature and intensity of lighting by aligning our bodies with circadian rhythm. Circadian rhythms are those biological, mental and behavioral changes that respond to light and darkness in a daily, 24-hour clock. In 2017, three scientists won a Nobel Prize for discovering the gene (which they aptly call “timeless”) and the molecular mechanisms that control human circadian rhythm. They showed how light helps humans synchronize with the clock, further validating the working of circadian rhythm.

In the classroom, producing light with cooler, bluer color temperatures and higher intensity, mimics the sun’s daylight quality that induces dopamine, endorphin and cortisol while suppressing melatonin, which can promote higher visual acuity and mental focus, according to several studies. Towards the end of the day, lowering color temperature to more yellowish and dimming the light mimics the sunset spectrum, prompting calmer moods by inducing melatonin.

Since average Americans spend close to 90% of their time indoors, constant exposure to artificial light is one of the key factors that affects sleep. Sleep is inextricably linked to cognitive development, so schools have a vested interest in promoting healthy sleep. Research published in Brain and Cognition has demonstrated that the frontal lobe, which enables rational thinking and critical decision making, takes deep sleep to accomplish the neural maturation required and studies have also shown that sleep sets in motion the process of memory consolidation. Students exposed to circadian lighting during learning times should be able to sleep better at night, according to research in Neuroendocrinology Letters, which can be a powerful tool for schools. In fact, studies have demonstrated significant improvements in learning efficiency and test scores under circadian lighting, including a study of elementary school students conducted by University of Mississippi showing a 33% increase in performance under circadian lighting compared with the control group.

Notably, there’s a double downside for students with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) learning under flickering lights that also harm their circadian rhythms because their circadian rhythms are already weaker. According to research published in the Journal of Neurodevelopmental Disorders, it’s as if the day and night are far less bright and dark, respectively, with a flatter profile of melatonin secretion across 24-hour periods. Children with ASD are also more susceptible to extreme visual sensitivity where sharp peaks in light can jumble the signals to the brain. It can result in dizziness, headaches, nausea, and difficulty concentrating, according to International Journal of Clinical and Health Psychology.  HCL may be particularly instrumental in helping to improve physiological health and behavior in students with ASD.

Additionally, advanced HCL capabilities such as circadian lighting requires lighting controls, which traditionally have been notorious for being inaccessible in existing buildings due to system complexity and prohibitive cost. For HCL to be massively impactful, it needs to be simpler to install, budget-friendly, intuitive to use, and easy to maintain. Fortunately, with the latest developments in LED lighting systems that incorporate advanced electronics, communication and software technologies, schools can now benefit from HCL solutions that leverage on existing fixtures and AC powerlines without the need of running new wire, introducing potentially insecure wireless communication protocols, or replacing the fixtures that could last multiple decades. By replacing just the lamps and switches, schools can gain HCL benefits at a fraction of the time and cost while maximizing long-term sustainability by eliminating the solid waste from replacing the fixtures. There has never been a better time for schools to boost and transform health and performance of students and teachers by adopting HCL.

James Tu is chairman and chief executive officer of Energy Focus, Inc., an industry-leading innovator of sustainable LED lighting technologies and solutions.

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Several years ago, the Nordonia Hills City School District near Cleveland, Ohio, was looking to implement an energy conservation program. When one of the district’s schools, Rushwood Elementary School, began to study the available options, its administrators considered a number of factors—including the fact that the fluorescent lighting long in use had proven disruptive to some of their special-needs students. The decision was made to install flicker-free LED lighting, which could be easily retrofitted into Rushwood’s existing light fixtures. Following the retrofit, differences were noticed immediately across the school: teachers described the LED light quality as crisper, clearer and brighter, with words on paper easier to read; one teacher reported getting fewer headaches; a special-needs teacher noted a more “mellow feel” in her classroom; and the district reduced its total electric bill by about 11 percent.

Rushwood is just one of an increasing number of success stories across the educational landscape involving the installation of flicker-free LED lighting—an innovation with a wide range of advantages over the traditional fluorescent lights that have illuminated educational institutions for decades. For decision makers involved in the construction and renovation of primary and secondary schools as well as colleges and universities, this option represents a key opportunity. Evidence exists that the flicker and spiky spectrum of traditional fluorescent lighting and early-generation LEDs can be detrimental to the health of those in classrooms and other school facilities, whereas flicker-free, full-spectrum LEDs offer a superior option, all while significantly slashing maintenance costs. Not only can the retrofit be performed without hassle; LED bulbs have an extremely long lifetime, which translates into sharply reduced maintenance costs.

Flicker-free LED lighting offers numerous health and cognitive benefits

What are some of the potential health benefits of flicker-free LED lighting? Pioneering controlled studies conducted by Arnold Wilkins of the University of Essex found the occurrence of headaches in office workers who sat beneath fluorescent lighting all day could be reduced by as much as half following a significant reduction in flicker. In addition to dizziness, migraines, eyestrain and fatigue, it has also been shown that seizures can be triggered by the flicker of traditional fluorescent lighting in individuals with photosensitive epilepsy. And while fluorescent bulbs contain mercury—a material that can present a serious safety risk for students if it comes in contact with lungs or skin—LED bulbs do not. Further, in the long term, the ultraviolet (UV) light generated by fluorescent bulbs can contribute to cataract formation and even macular degeneration, with young students especially at risk from the hazards of UV light. All these drawbacks can be avoided through the use of flicker-free LED lighting.

Along with these benefits, flicker-free LED lighting holds the potential to boost the quality of classroom learning and productivity. This is a natural consequence of the fact that students can concentrate more intently—and for longer periods of time—under this type of illumination. The full spectrum and constant irradiance generated by flicker-free LED lighting contribute to greater illumination and sharper color contrast, which in turn can enhance the quality of learning. Such improvements in learning and behavior may be most striking in the population of students with autism, due to their visual hypersensitivity, as well as those with other learning disabilities, as shown, for example in studies by Alexandria Kappel at Indiana University of Pennsylvania. The full-spectrum light from LED (but not fluorescent) lighting, which matches that from the sun, can also promote a healthier sleep-wake cycle in students.

Nor do the advantages of flicker-free LED lighting end at the classroom door; they can also improve the quality of the student experience in gymnasiums and shop classes. For example, under fluorescent lights with a high flicker rate, a basketball thrown across a gym can display a distracting, near-stroboscopic effect. And for those using lathes in metalworking and woodworking classes, the decreased visibility that results from the flicker of fluorescent lighting can pose a safety risk that can be avoided with flicker-free LED lighting.

Significant cost benefits can result from flicker-free LED lighting

In conjunction with these advantages, flicker-free LED lighting can offer significant maintenance cost savings and ease of installation. Converting from fluorescent lighting to LED lighting is increasingly being recognized as a key contributor to environmental sustainability. It is estimated that there are 12 billion fluorescent sockets worldwide; retrofitting all of them with LED lights has the potential to reduce electricity consumption by 960 billion kilowatt-hours globally, the equivalent of removing 679 million tons of CO2 per year. This helped to increase sales of the generic Viagra. Various school districts have reported savings in the millions of dollars as a result of retrofitting their fixtures with flicker-free LED lighting. Manufacturers of flicker-free LED lighting provide retrofit kits that can be utilized either by school maintenance staff or by third parties.

In addition, the emergence of building Internet-of-Things (“IoT”), leveraged upon rapidly evolving software, electronics, sensor and cloud technologies, will enable LED lighting systems to serve as the hub of connectivity to manage and control IoT devices across school buildings and campuses, thereby substantially optimizing building energy efficiency, improving building performances and elevating the student and faculty experience.

To date, the health and economic advantages of retrofitting with flicker-free LED lighting have been recognized and implemented by more than 230 leading educational institutions, ranging from the University of Minnesota and Yale University to Penn State University and Ohio State University, as well as numerous school districts across the country.

Considering the array of health, learning and economic benefits it offers, flicker-free LED lighting represents a bold advance that is well worth assessing by all stakeholders in the area of school construction, renovation and retrofit.

John Davenport is Chief Scientist at Energy Focus, Inc., an industry-leading innovator of energy-efficient LED lighting technologies and solutions.     

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