Proper lighting is crucial to creating a safe and productive work environment, yet it often doesn’t get the attention it deserves. Good lighting enhances visibility and significantly impacts our health, mood, and overall performance. Today, we’re shedding light on the importance of adequate lighting in the workplace and how it can transform your work experience.
In this post, we’ll explore the various effects of lighting on physical and mental well-being, the potential hazards of poor lighting, and practical tips for optimizing lighting in different work settings. By the end, you’ll have a comprehensive understanding of how to improve your workplace lighting for better health and efficiency.
What You’ll Learn
- Effects of Lighting on Health: Understand how different types of lighting can influence your physical and mental health, including common issues like eye strain and mood changes.
- Hazards of Poor Lighting: Learn about the potential risks of inadequate lighting, such as increased accident rates and reduced work quality.
- Optimizing Workplace Lighting: Discover practical strategies to improve lighting in various work settings, ensuring a safer and more productive environment.
Introduction
Light refers to a band of electromagnetic radiation (EMR) between 380 and 780 nm that the human eye can see. Light consists of many spectra or wavebands. The white light that is mainly seen consists of all of these spectra.
When light strikes the surface of an object, it can react in three ways: absorbed, reflected, or transmitted. Most surfaces exhibit selective reflection, meaning a specific light component will be reflected. This reflected light determines the color that is perceived by the eye.
In the workplace, lighting is measured as one of four quantities. For visual comfort and good optical performance in the workplace, the following conditions should be met:
- Suitable illuminance levels.
- Balanced arrangements of the lights.
- Matched phasing of lights.
- Avoidance of glare.
The Eye’s Response to Light
The organ that receives light in the human body is the eye. As light energy passes through the pupil, it is focused on the back of the eye at the retina. This stimulus is converted to bioelectric energy and then passes along the optic nerve to the eye. The retina has two types of nerve endings: cones and rods.
Cones are sensitive to light’s quantity and quality (color) but are only effective when adequate lighting exists. Rods are more sensitive to small quantities of light but cannot detect color.
Therefore, in dark conditions, the rods predominate. However, the sensitivity is decreased when a bright light reflected from an object falls on the retina. The glare or disturbance that results in the entire retina responding to a bright patch of light is known as reactive glare. Therefore, it is essential that lighting levels are similar in the field of vision and that general lighting levels do not fluctuate rapidly.
Monitoring the intensity of brightness and color temperature of light is essential to maintain and enhance workers’ health, including their mental health. For example, one of the factors associated with depression is the defect in the quantity and quality of ambient lighting. Two of the most important characteristics of light are illumination and correlated color temperature (Golmohammadi et al., 2020)
Measuring Light
Light is measured using a lux meter (a light meter or photometer. Two types of lighting surveys can be conducted:
- Average illuminance.
- Distribution of lighting and luminance patterns.
Lighting surveys should be conducted to check a new lighting system’s calculated value, assess compliance or design specifications, or indicate whether maintenance, modification, or replacement is required. The activity should begin by conducting a detailed description of the work area, including:
- Lamp type and age.
- Luminaire and ballast type.
- Voltage.
- Interior surface reflections.
- State of maintenance.
- Measuring instrument used in the survey.
The lux meter should be cosine corrected to account for the effect of light falling on it at oblique angles and color corrected. While smartphone apps to measure illuminance are now available, some researchers suggest they are inappropriate for occupational lighting assessments (Cerqueira et al., 2017). In addition, it is important to consider the position and viewing direction of workers, when assessing lighting conditions (van Duijnhoven et al., 2019).
Glare
Glare occurs due to three different effects: contrast, adaptation, and saturation. It may impair vision (disability glare) or result in discomfort (discomfort glare). Disability and discomfort glare may exist simultaneously or separately. Saturation effects occur when the light source is so bright that the eye cannot adapt to it.
Adaptation effects occur when moving from a darkened environment to a well-lit environment. Excessive brightness contacts within the field of vision cause contrast events. The eye adjusts itself to the average luminance of the field of vision, and this may result in low-luminous areas being invisible and excessively lit areas causing discomfort.
Lighting Designs
In general, lighting in the workplace should be evenly distributed and of adequate brightness. Inappropriate lighting can disturb vision, circadian rhythms and cause psychological disturbances (Pisaniello et al., 2018). Glare should also be minimized. This can be achieved by ensuring:
- All objects and significant surfaces in the visual field are equally bright.
- No source of light appears in the visual field during working operations.
- Lights are provided with shades or glare shields.
- The line from the eye to the light source makes an angle of more than 30 degrees with the horizontal.
- Fluorescent tubes are aligned at right angles to the line of sight.
- The use of reflective colors and materials on machines, tools, tabletops, etc, are avoided.
Summary
Proper lighting in the occupational setting is vital for workers’ comfort, productivity, health, and safety. Lighting surveys should consider several factors to make the best recommendations for a comfortable and healthy workplace.
Helpful Resources
- Industrial Hygiene Auditing Blog Post, by Megan Tranter
Bibliography
Cerqueira, D., Carvalho, F., & Bettencourt Melo, R. (2017). Is It Smart to Use Smartphones to Measure Illuminance for Occupational Health and Safety Purposes? International Conference on Applied Human Factors and Ergonomics, 258-268. https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-319-60525-8_27
Golmohammadi, R., Pirmoradi, Z., Torghabeh, M. M., & Fardmal, J. (2020). Lighting and color temperature assessment in the office workplaces and relationship to visual fatigue. Iran Occupational Health, 17(1). http://ioh.iums.ac.ir/browse.php?a_id=2387&sid=1&slc_lang=en&ftxt=1
Pisaniello, D., Gaskin, S., D’Orso, M., & Piccoli, B. (2018). 1688a Office lighting surveys – refocussing on the eye and health. Occupational and Environmental Medicine, 75. https://oem.bmj.com/content/75/Suppl_2/A538.2
van Duijnhoven, J., Aarts, M., & Kort, H. (2019). The importance of including position and viewing direction when measuring and assessing the lighting conditions of office workers. Work, 64(4), 877-895. https://content.iospress.com/articles/work/wor193028
