A Survivor’s Guide to Fluorescent Lighting

Ever since environmentalists started promoting how energy-efficient their compact fluorescent light bulbs are, I have been running as fast as I can in the opposite direction. I am one of those people (1/3 of the human population, apparently) who are sensitive to the flicker of fluorescent lights. I don't have the problem as severely as some -- I don't get migraines from it -- but I'm uncomfortable. My anxiety level is higher, my concentration is not as good, and I feel like it will be physically impossible for me to relax until that light is off or I leave the room.

The thing that makes this particularly challenging for me is that I live in a very efficiency-conscious household. We’re careful to do what we can to reduce our environmental impact. For the most part, I am fully on board with this… but when we get around to talking about light bulbs, we have trouble. My partner wants to replace as many light bulbs as possible with compact fluorescents. I have been saying, basically, over my dead body.

Because I want peace in my household (and because I do care about conservation myself), I have been doing research. I figured maybe I'd find a solution to my problem, or maybe I'd find scientific data to back up my "hell no." What I've got so far seems to be some of each.

There seems to be agreement out there that the older fluorescents -- the ones that hum, visibly flicker, and give dead, cold light – can have significant negative effects on people. There are studies showing significantly improved performance in school children in classrooms with full-spectrum light versus cool white fluorescent, and parallel studies for workplaces. On a hopeful note, these studies seem to agree that mixing fluorescent light with natural sunlight or incandescent (non-flickering) light can ameliorate some of the unpleasantness, or even block out the flicker effect.

The folks selling fluorescent lights will admit to these problems, because they want to tell you that their new improved CF (compact fluorescent) bulb is much better than that. I can't count the number of kinds we have ordered by mail, just to try, just in case. A couple have been barely tolerable for me. Most have not been tolerable at all. Since we’re committed to continuing the search, I have been trying to figure out what the differences are.

There are several variables to understand when assessing CF bulbs. The color rendering index (CRI) of a lamp rates its ability to render an object's true color when compared to sunlight, on a scale of 0 (bad) to 100 (good). "Color temperature" is the color of the light that is emitted. “Full spectrum” fluorescents reproduce the color spectrum present in natural sunlight, and are said to reduce a lot of the ill effects caused by "cool white" fluorescents. However, I’ve discovered that at least for me, just making the bulb full-spectrum does not address the problem. And there’s yet another variable: flicker speed.

All fluorescent bulbs flicker. How fast they flicker depends on which kind of ballast they have: magnetic or electronic. (The ballast attaches to the bulb, functions as a starter, and regulates the amount of electrical current flowing to the bulb.) Older fluorescents have magnetic ballasts and flicker at about 60 cycles per second. Electronic ballasts makes the flicker a lot faster – 30,000 cycles per second -- so it’s reported to be too fast for a human to perceive at all. Gaiam, a company selling CF light bulbs, says that using electronic ballast completely addresses the problems usually caused by fluorescent light. The Canadian Centre for Occupational Health and Safety (not trying to sell anything) says that switching to electronic ballast has reduced the number of complaints by 50%.

I would love to be able to go through the CF bulbs I’ve tried, compare them by ballast type, color temperature, and CRI, and look for patterns in which bulbs are more and less tolerable for me. Unfortunately, that’s not possible, because the bulbs are not consistently labeled in any way that a consumer can interpret to get that information. I’ve looked at a number of websites selling CF bulbs, and only one site I found, selling one brand of bulb, specified which type of ballast it had. Some sites provide numbers for color temperature and CRI; others give only descriptions like “warm glow” and “natural daylight.” What such words amount to when the bulb comes in the mail varies widely.

To allow fluorescent lighting to fulfill its potential as a household energy-saver, manufacturers need to create a clear and consistent labeling system that would allow sensitive consumers to predict more easily which bulbs will work for us. But for now, what’s worked for me has still been mostly trial and error. There’s one “warm glow” bulb I’ve found that bothers me much less than others have. And the most useful trick I’ve learned is to use incandescent and CF bulbs together in the same room – I find that I notice the fluorescent light much less that way. We’ve replaced about 50% of the bulbs in the house with fluorescents, and I only notice it very occasionally. So I can at least offer this much encouragement: with experimentation, even a seriously fluorescent-sensitive person just might find a balance that works.