[Gilligor]

I was wondering if the LED backlighting on the Macbook Pro is safe avoiding the "blue light hazard effect? Does the screen somehow diffuse the harmful blue spikes?

[ghporter]

Welcome to the MacNN Forums!

It's my understanding that the LED illumination components produce as close to "white" light as possible, so any blue light you'd see comes from the displayed image, not the screen's components.

What sort of retinal issue are you concerned about?

[imitchellg5]

Glenn is correct. The LED backlight produces the best whites as possible on a consumer product.

[Gilligor]

As I understand, white light from LED lights are actually blue LED's made to look white. I think the issue is the blue spike they transmit that can damage our eyes. Most of the information on "blue light hazard" is a little too technical for me. Here are a couple of articles I came across.

Artificial Lighting and the Blue Light Hazard
Blue LEDs: A health hazard? | Texyt

I'm sure the Macbook Pro's are safe but before I plunk down some serious cash I wanted to check out this issue since I will be starring at the screen quite a bit.

[ghporter]

Originally Posted by Gilligor 

As I understand, white light from LED lights are actually blue LED's made to look white. I think the issue is the blue spike they transmit that can damage our eyes. Most of the information on "blue light hazard" is a little too technical for me. Here are a couple of articles I came across.

Artificial Lighting and the Blue Light Hazard
Blue LEDs: A health hazard? | Texyt

I'm sure the Macbook Pro's are safe but before I plunk down some serious cash I wanted to check out this issue since I will be starring at the screen quite a bit.

White LEDs are a combination of several colors of LED emitters, so that their spectrum is very smooth and as white as any lighting source available. There are no "spikes" of color from the LED illumination source because that would alter the color you see on the screen.

It is impossible to avoid any single wavelength of light. The sky reflects almost all colors of light very well, so while it is blue in appearance, it acts as an enormous and diffuse source of all colors of light. The only time there's a hazard from any one color of light is when that color is enormously brighter than any others around you AND the exposure to this single color is the only thing you see for literally weeks at a time.

Finally NOBODY uses blue LEDs for illumination. They don't work well for it because of the eye's color response characteristics (your second link points out how poorly we see in the blue spectrum anyway). LED lightbulbs are coming. But their output will be broad and WHITE, not blue. There's nothing to worry about from blue LEDs unless you simply cover your walls with them and then stay in that blue room forever.

[Gilligor]

Thanks for the info, not much on the web about LED backlighting safety.

[mduell]

I thought white LEDs were UV LEDs with a phosphor coating that changed the light wavelength?

[ghporter]

Originally Posted by mduell 

I thought white LEDs were UV LEDs with a phosphor coating that changed the light wavelength?

The size and structure of all the backlight LEDs I've found online suggests that instead of a phosphor mechanism, they use the combined emitter structure I described above. Of course if I'm missing a good source for details about the backlights used in Macs, I'd really like to see it. I'm curious about the color temperature and spectrum curves for these units.