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5 Comments

  1. Neil
    21 November 2017 @ 8:33 pm

    Interesting article: I drive trains for London Underground and new speedometers are being introduced in the cabs of the stock I drive and each time I drive in one of these cabs (unless I fully cover up the speedo) I get a painful pressure sensation in and around my eyes, and a headache that lasts all day long. And today I had some stabbing sensations at the back of my head on the left hand side.
    I’ve never had migraines before (except possibly for one brief period c.12 years ago when new office lighting caused me similar effects but more powerful).
    The light emitted from the new speedos is a strong green.
    I need to find more information on this…

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  2. Linda
    28 December 2017 @ 12:10 am

    Hi Neil, I read in the research article that only a specific wavelength of green (530 ± 10 nm) can be beneficial, other greens can trigger migraines or even make them worse. The light of your speedometer probably is of a higher nm.
    By the way: I’m a bit surprised the designers of the train didn’t consider using red/amber lights since it preserves the night vision of the driver, which, as I can imagine, is relevant because as a train driver you need to be able to see your environment in case there is something going on on the tracks. This is why jet fighters have red lighting on their panel opposed to commercial airplanes which have white or green lighted instruments; their pilots fly purely on their instruments and don’t need to see the environment.

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  3. Neil
    29 December 2017 @ 7:38 am

    Hi Linda,
    Thanks for the thought-provoking reply.
    I’m afraid I don’t know much about this subject, other than a lot of perplexity (and pain) from what I’m starting to experience.
    And as no one at work seems to know anything about it either, it makes me the oddity (employers don’t tend to cater much for oddities). So it raises other concerns about job security…
    I wasn’t part of the selection/assessment process for these new speedometers (our original style have a mix of pale green and orange lighting for target and actual speeds respectively) the new speedos maintain that colour scheme but with much more intensity in the colours (LEDs).
    It was fascinating to read about the instrumentation lighting in jet fighters… the reason we don’t use red lights in train cabs is because red lights for us are danger signals (jet pilots don’t have to worry about stopping at points or various other signals), so it could result in not registering a danger signal if we constantly had that colour in front of us.
    I’m just wondering about the research article you referred to, could you share the title?
    I’ve just read the “Green light found to ease the pain of migraine” article from May 16 that was linked about but the findings reported there state green light actually helps(!), and that doesn’t assist me.
    I’ve also seen a reference to something called ‘Irlen Syndrome’, which might be worth looking into as it may have relevance for me.
    Thank you for the comments.

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  4. Linda
    3 January 2018 @ 8:29 am

    Hi Neal,
    thanks for explaining the colour scheme on your panel, it not being red sounds very sensible!
    Considering the true green: at the bottom of this article: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2016/05/160517083042.htm one of the researchers mentions the ‘pure’ green light (which is 530nm +/-10). As an aside: he says it will be difficult to develop such a light bulb which I find odd since, as far as I know, plenty of LED lamps are available which only emit one pure light waveform .
    Anyway, in your case I can imagine that you would benefit from simply wearing sun glasses since you seem to bothered both by the intensity and the colours of the lights. You could try reddish or brown ones, and see if they help. It may sound strange but workers in the process industry and at nuclear plants sometimes wear them when the lights on their panels are too bright during their night shift (which keep them awake later on when it’s time to sleep).

    I think the Irlen syndrome is congenital, and you would have many other issues and already from birth. I understood from your previous post that your current issues arose when the lights were changed so I think it is a combination of a particular individual sensitivity and circumstances.

    Anyhow, I think your problem is solvable with the right glasses. You shouldn’t loose your job over it!
    You might want to send a message to Toine Schoutens (https://www.linkedin.com/in/toine-schoutens-b48b334/), he is a friendly guy and an expert in the field and I’m sure he is willing to give you some free advice (though he doesn’t mind to sell stuff either;-). By the way: I don’t have any connection with his company).
    Good luck, and keep us posted!

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  5. Linda
    3 January 2018 @ 8:31 am

    PS Apologies Neil, for misspelling your name in my previous post.

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