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LED lighting - protection against malaria
Last reviewed: 02.07.2025
LED lamps are considered environmentally friendly technologies, and such lamps help to save energy significantly. When every person uses only LED lamps, harmful emissions and energy costs will be significantly reduced in the world.
Recently, LED lighting has become more and more accessible, for example, previously most people could not afford to buy such lamps because of their high cost, but now their price is more affordable for the middle class and they are sold in almost any store.
But beyond reducing energy costs, LED lights can reduce the spread of deadly infections like malaria.
Malaria kills more than 600,000 people in Africa every year; mosquitoes are carriers of the deadly virus, but in addition to malaria, insects also carry other equally dangerous infections.
Experts are constantly working to find ways to combat dangerous infections and reduce their spread, but they have not been able to find truly effective means.
Experts from Holland and California, who were trying to find a way to repel dangerous insects and reduce the spread of malaria, after studying the behavior of insects and the effect of different shades of light on their behavior, came to the conclusion that LEDs attract fewer insects. It turns out that LEDs emit less blue light, so they do not attract insects as much.
This study shows that LEDs can be tuned to miss out on some areas of the spectrum. This may have negative environmental impacts, but will provide light that is suitable for indoor use.
Lighting that doesn't attract insects is especially important in areas where glass windows and mosquito nets are rare, said lead researcher Travis Longcore.
During the experiments, scientists compared how insects react to a fluorescent lamp, a customizable one, and a regular one with a blue LED glow.
As a result, it turned out that LED lamps without blue light attract 20% fewer insects, in contrast to other bulbs taken for the experiment.
According to experts, if such bulbs are distributed in places where the highest number of infections with dangerous mosquito-borne infections are recorded, this will help people have comfortable lighting at night and not attract a large number of dangerous insects.
Experts note that the benefits of LED bulbs are undeniable for every person. It has already been proven that blue light emitted by lighting devices and modern electronic devices (smartphones, tablets, computers, TVs, etc.) has a negative impact on human health. Such light can not only lead to insomnia, but also provoke more serious diseases such as obesity, cancer, and diabetes.
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