In teddy bears, iPhones and baby sleep monitors: turn off those LED lights at night before they affect your sleep cycles and health!

Professor Abraham Haim, an authority on the biological effects of light pollution, presented his findings at the International Congress of Zoology (ICZ) in Haifa Israel.

World experts discussed, “Light Pollution and its Ecophysiological Consequences” and came to a consensus that light pollution does have health consequences.

Professor Haim’s team studied the effect of night light on blind mole rats and seeing rats.  He presented his research findings indicating that the biological effects of nocturnal lights included damage to metabolic rates, body mass, oxygen consumption and the level of certain hormones including melatonin– which is known to impact sleep cycles and mood and is believed to suppress some cancers and tumors.

Studies seemed to indicate that the short-wavelength blueish light emitted by Light Emitting Diodes (LEDs) has an especially strong effect. Ever since humans brought light into their homes in the form of candles and oil lamps, we’ve considered artificial lights to be a positive influence in our lives.  World religions reinforced this belief with the miracles of menorahs, eternal flames and the light of the world.

Up through the invention of incandescent bulbs indoor lights had a color which was warmer (redder) than natural sunlight.  This changed somewhat with the advent of greenish florescent lights.  But a more dramatic change came very recently with the invention of efficient white light Light Emitting Diodes (LEDs).

The history of LED lights

H.J. Round was working in the UK’s Marconi labs when he noticed electroluminescence of a cat’s-whisker silicon carbide diode in 1907.

LEDs which followed in 1927 were so dim as to be impractical until Biard and Pittman of Texas Instruments made the first practical red LED in 1961.  The color of an LED is proportional to the bandgap voltage which is proportional to energy which is proportional to the chances of burning out your LED before you can say, “Hey, look what I invented!”

Decades passed with only dim red and yellow-green LEDs commercially available.  Finally in 1993 Shuji Nakamura worked for Nichia Corporation in Japan and combined blue LEDs with a yellow-white phosphor to produce the first white light LEDs.  He moved to the University of Santa Barbara and won the millennium prize for inventing brighter green, blue and white LEDs as well as the blue lasers which make blue-ray video players possible.

The problem with LED lights

We may have learned this in grade school, a perfect mix of the primary colors red, blue and green will make white. Existing red LEDs along with Nakamura’s bright green and blue LEDs finally made this possible.

Only that’s not how most white LEDs work.  After years hovering just the other side of impossible, blue LEDs became more efficient than their red and green grandparents.  So most white LEDs are actually deep blue LEDs with Nakamura’s yellow-white phosphor coating.  Yellow-white + blue = white.

But even though our eyes try to average it out, the strong blue spectral component remains.  And that’s where the trouble comes from.  It seems that the human biological clock evolved around fire so isn’t as easily fooled by reddish-yellow incandescent lights. Blue light is different: As soon as it hits our pineal gland, our melatonin levels fade and our biological clocks are reset to wake-up time. That’s all fine if you’re only exposed to blue light shortly before sunrise.

But blue-white LEDs aren’t just inside eco-efficient LED fixtures. They’re in your television and the mobile phone you use to checked your Facebook status and the iPad you use to read your bedtime novel. My son’s teddy bear, baby monitor and night light all contained blue or blue-white LEDs. And all of these devices emit enough blue light to potentially effect hormone levels and sleep patterns or cause other biological effects.

Alternatives to LED lights?

Electron Stimulated Luminescence (ESL) lights are one alternative which can replace both mercury-laden CFLs and expensive blue-white LEDs but they aren’t yet easy to find and their bulky shape makes them a poor fit for many of the tight spots where LEDs shine.  It is possible that by refining LED composition and control circuits, an efficient white LED will be invented which does make use of a warmer balance of red, green and blue LEDs.  LEDs are rugged, efficient, long-lasting and very bright but nearly every new technology has a hidden downside which must be studied and balanced against the advantages.  LEDs are no different.

The post Are LED lights a health hazard? appeared first on Green Prophet.

Investing in solar panels for your home or company isn’t just about taking a leap of faith, and being green. It’s a solid business investment that can give you good returns as the panels feed back to the grid, depending on where you live and the set feed-in tariffs. And if you are living or running a business off your supply, the energy savings by going solar will be significant.

But if you are installing solar panels on roofs or are a keen do-it-it-yourselfer how do you know the best location to get the most from the shifting sun? While your panels are stationary, the sun is not. It not only rises and falls but shifts position throughout the year. A new app, the Solar Panels Suitability Checker can tell you where is the best place to put your panels. And it may not even be on the roof!

Accessed through either an iPad or iPhone, the free app works with Google Maps to determine where your solar panels will be most efficient. To use it, download the app then push the ‘Use Current Location’ button and the device will pinpoint the user’s location. The address of where the solar panels are to be installed can be keyed in manually too.

Select your country and address in the drop down menu. The developer says it can be used anywhere in the world with your iphone. I think it would be useful if you are looking to buy property that you intend to use as a solar energy investment.

A hillside retreat in the Alps, or a rooftop apartment in Beirut? Let the app decide!

Using a graph overlay paired with satellite imagery (shown in the image above) the app helps you find the most optimal place on your property for solar efficiency. No guesswork. No fingers to the wind. No divine inspiration or prayers to Sun Gods needed.

And if you are not yet able to buy solar panels, use the app to find the best location for your solar cooker.

The post Solar Panel App Angles Your Investment to Catch the Best of the Sun appeared first on Green Prophet.

Unless you grow your own food on a roof or balcony or in traditional backyard garden, the Lapka iPhone device might be for you. Not only does it detect chemical and radiation threats, but it also measures temperature and humidity in order to help users identify the healthiest combination for them.

It’s a sad state of affairs when we need an iPhone application to tell us whether our food is healthy or not. But people who live in areas where government regulations are lax or when radiation is a real threat could benefit from this nifty device.

The Lapka set comes with a downloadable app and four additional pieces that plug into your phone’s ear jack. One piece detects radiation with highly sensitive sensors that count every particle.

Another piece called organic detects nitrates in raw food and water in order to determine whether there is an inordinate amount of fertilizers in the food being measured.

EMF Lapka detects electromagnetic fields caused by electronic hardware and telecommunication devices. If these are of concern to you, the device can point out which home/areas have the least amount of this kind of pollution.

Finally the humidity piece detects temperature and humidity to make it easier to identify safe levels of both.

Each measuring device not only identifies contaminated food and environments but also provides detailed information about the consequences of – say – eating a mouthful of fertilizers, giving people a much greater awareness. And that’s a good thing. Right?

The product will be released in September.

To find deals on products like this one and more, visit this resource New voucher uk

The post Lapka iPhone Device Will Tell You if Your Food is Really Organic appeared first on Green Prophet.

Apple product releases are  delayed in the Mideast shortening the supported product life in this part of the world. Apple also practices planned obsolescence.

In an open letter to customers, Apple’s senior VP of hardware engineering admitted that it was a mistake to remove Apple products from the EPEAT environmental rating system. He writes:”We’ve recently heard from many loyal Apple customers who were disappointed to learn that we had removed our products from the EPEAT rating system. I recognize that this was a mistake. Starting today, all eligible Apple products are back on EPEAT.”

The Electronic Product and Environmental Assessment Tool (EPEAT) is a voluntary environmental rating system for electronic products.  It was developed in 2003 as a collaborative effort between business, government and academic interests and helps define and measure such parameters as energy consumption, use of toxic materials, greenhouse gas emission, recycling efficiency and serviceability.

When Apple suddenly removed all of its iPhones, iPads and Macbooks from the EPEAT registry, it was the equivalent of an architectural firm suddenly saying it would would no longer look at LEED, BREEAM, Estidama or GSAS green building standards.  It went beyond mystifying, it was just plain stupid.  This isn’t just a green opinion, it was an immediate threat to Apple’s bottom line. When Apple dropped EPEAT, certain government agencies including the city of San Francisco and large companies such as Ford would stop buying Apple products.

Now that Apple has reversed its decision, anyone can search the EPEAT website and see some of the criteria which helped the 15 inch MacBook Pro earn a ‘Gold’ rating:

Retina Display MacBooks “Designed for End of Life”

Apple gets 5 out of 5 points here but they were right about one thing, EPEAT doesn’t tell the whole green story.  Notice particularly criteria 4-3.1.3 Easy disassembly of external enclosure and 4.3.1.7 Molded/glued in metal eliminated or removable.

According to the experienced technicians at iFixit, the 2012 Macbook’s Pro’s display and battery are glued into the aluminum case rendering it virtually unfixable.  You can forget about replacing or upgrading the RAM or hard drive too.

The RAM is soldered to the motherboard and the hard drive does not use an industry standard SATA connector.  Notice also that iPods, iPads and  iPhones do not appear on the EPEAT website.  The current generation are even less serviceable than the MacBooks.

Remember when batteries were replaceable?

Apple knows how to design serviceable products.  Last night I repaired the loose antenna inside my wife’s iPhone 3G using only a screwdriver, a suction cup and a bit of sticky tape.  My thirteen-year-old Apple Powerbook’s DVD drive, hard drive, RAM, battery, keyboard and individual keys can be replaced without any special tools.

Some lithium batteries only last about 300 charge cycles, less than a year of daily use.  So it is conceivable that my 1999 Powerbook will outlive these 2012 MacBooks.  Except that Apple recently obsoleted it with their iCloud service.  Software upgrades and cloud services should extend a device’s life, but Apple found a way for them to do the opposite.  Apple product releases are often delayed in the Mideast further shortening the supported product life in this part of the world.

Can a greenwashable standard keep my iDevice out of the iLandfill?

Apple topped Fortune magazine’s most respected company list for the past four years.  It has beautiful products and enviable market-share.  Sometimes it seems that Apple can do no wrong and yet they were not able to ignore even this weak environmental standard.  Perhaps there is a lesson here for all of us?

Consumers do care deeply about the environment and yet even the best available standard for green electronics overlooks the fact that the current generation of iPhones, iPads and MacBooks are designed to be disposable in as little as one year.

Apple may use green materials and contract with good product recyclers but think of the energy required to ship your device to Apple when a dead battery renders it useless.  Apple’s short-cycle planned-obsolescence violates the spirit of EPEAT standard, but they aren’t being evil.

Planned obsolescence is simply how Apple survives in our fast-paced economy where environmental standards are greenwashable and consumers are focused on “I” and “Now!”   Whether your next iDevice goes into a landfill or is recycled into a toilet seat, it is unlikely to have a long iLife unless consumers demand it.

Photo of Lego man fixing an iPhone by Brian Nitz
Photo of women with laptop via Shutterstock

The post Apple Admits Dropping EPEAT Eco Standard Was a Mistake appeared first on Green Prophet.

The Catholic Church is embracing the burgeoning digital world and encouraging its followers to do the same. With its own You Tube channel and Facebook page (hopefully this won’t encourage a host of Catholics with eating disorders), the Holy See believes that technology and Catholicism can be mutually beneficial. Which is why Bishop Kevin Rhoades of the Fort Wayne Diocese approved the iPhone confession app created by Patrick Leinen of Little iApps in Indiana. Too cold or too lazy to drive to Church? Pick up your iPhone instead, and save some greenhouse gas emissions while you’re at it.

For less than $2, penitent Catholics can purchase the app and confess their sins. The software includes a list of the ten commandments and a menu of possible transgressions. Simply tick off the sin that best applies and the confession is complete.

If a particular sin is not available, users may create their own. For a random selection, sinning Catholics need only shake the phone until one shows up.

Engadget readers responded with more than a touch of sarcasm to this news.

One reader noted, “Besides, everybody knows God uses Android.” Another asked if there is an option for molesting choirboys.

A more discerning reader, Scott Foshizzle Thompson pointed out that “It’s just a guideline to use during confession.”

Indeed, the Catholic Church is not opposed to technology, but it is also careful to point out that it must not take precedence over our humanity.

According to the BBC:

In his World Communications Address on 24 January, Pope Benedict XVI said it was not a sin to use social networking sites but urged users to maintain their perspective.

“It is important always to remember that virtual contact cannot and must not take the place of direct human contact with people at every level of our lives,” he said.

A spokesperson from the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of England and Wales told BBC News the app was a “useful tool to help people prepare for the Sacrament of Reconciliation.”

One hopes that the list of sins won’t create a new realm of possibility for wayward Catholics, or that recovering Catholics will resist the temptation to clock up as many sins as possible. Stranger things have happened, like confessing to a phone.

:: Engadget & BBC

More on the intersection of religion and the environment.

How Iran’s Zoroastrian Burials Are Green

From Rockstars To Recycling: Interview With Kristiane Backer

Hezbollah Chief Compares Environment To Freedom Of Speech & Religion

The post Too Cold To Confess In Church? Use Your iPhone Instead appeared first on Green Prophet.