[DtnB]

I actually looked into this recently and found some articles(which I have since lost) that explained that it would appear that the delta between blue light in the morning and at night is the mechanism by which our circadian rhythm seems to work.

However, working with the idea that blue light is photo toxic, it is most likely better to reduce your blue light at night rather than increase it in the morning.

I wanted to do this experiment with dosing myself with blue light in the morning but I abandoned that after seeing research on photo toxicity

Perhaps establishing a morning habit of going and standing in front of an east facing window might be a worthy experiment?

[sizzle]

Just looked up blue light photo toxicity, that is some scary stuff! So is staring at blue light computer monitors all day causing corneal cell death?

How much is this increasing the risk of macular degeneration?

[rangibaby]

> Just looked up blue light photo toxicity, that is some scary stuff! So is staring at blue light computer monitors all day causing corneal cell death?

I think you're going to be OK. There is a very large, strong (stronger than any monitor) source of blue light that your eyes can handle at least 12 hours of exposure per day to

[DtnB]

While you are right to ward off this person's paranoia and we really shouldn't be completely freaking out about light exposure from our phones and such.

I think you are minimizing the issue. We wear sunglasses when it is bright (and should as it can be harmful to our eyes), we don't stare directly at the sun, we don't have it anywhere near as close to our faces, and we don't have the sunlight at night which adds another 2-4 hours of exposure to blue light.

There would appear to be more intense blue light in an LED than coming from the sun. This page while not a particularly good primary source has some comparisons of the intensity of the blue light in LEDs vs sunlight. https://iristech.co/pwm-flicker/

"The use of blue light is becoming increasingly prominent in our society, and a large segment of the world population is now subjected to daily exposure (from a few minutes to several hours) of artificial light at an unusual time of the day (night). Because light has a cumulative effect and many different characteristics (e.g., wavelength, intensity, duration of the exposure, time of day), it is important to consider the spectral output of the light source to minimize the danger that may be associated with blue light exposure. Thus, LEDs with an emission peak of around 470–480 nm should be preferred to LEDs that have an emission peak below 450 nm. Although we are convinced that exposure to blue light from LEDs in the range 470–480 nm for a short to medium period (days to a few weeks) should not significantly increase the risk of development of ocular pathologies, this conclusion cannot be generalized to a long-term exposure (months to years). Finally, we believe that additional studies on the safety of long-term exposure to low levels of blue light are needed to determine the effects of blue light on the eye."

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4734149/

Basically, we shouldn't go out of our way to expose ourselves to excess blue light if we can help it. We don't know what it does entirely. Its not worth losing your mind over either but its not quite simple as 'the sun is blue. you'll be fine'

[tzs]

> There would appear to be more intense blue light in an LED than coming from the sun.

I was surprised at how intense LEDs are. When I got my eclipse viewing glasses [1] for viewing the 2017-08-21 eclipse I spent some time trying them out on every seemingly bright light source around my house and my office.

The only things that were easily visible through the eclipse glasses were a 3500 lumen 200 watt halogen bulb, and the white LEDs from an iPhone 6 plus flashlight app, a hand cranked emergency flashlight, and an LED head lamp.

[1] https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B007MD8E0Q/