Blue-Light Hazard of Light-Emitting Diodes Assessed with Gaussian Functions

The high blue proportion of phosphor-conversion white-light emitting diodes (pc-LEDs), especially of those with higher correlated color temperatures (CCT), raises concern about photochemically induced retinal damages. Although almost all general lighting service LEDs are safe, other applications exist, like spotlights for theatres or at construction sites, that can pose a severe blue-light hazard (BLH) risk, and their photobiological safety must be assessed. Because of required but challenging radiance measurements, a calculative approach can be supportive for risk assessment. It is the aim of this work to exploit Gaussian functions to study LED parameter variations affecting BLH exposure. Gaussian curve approximations for color LEDs, the BLH action spectrum, and the spectral luminous efficiency for photopic vision enabled analytically solving the BLH efficiency, ηB, and the BLH efficacy of luminous radiation, KB,v. It was found that sigmoidal functions describe the CCT dependence of ηB and KB,v for different color LEDs with equal spectral bandwidth. Regarding pc-LEDs, variations of peak wavelengths, intensities, and bandwidths led to linear or parabolic shaped chromaticity coordinate correlations. ηB and KB,v showed pronounced CCT dependent extrema that might be exploited to reduce BLH. Finally, an experimental test of the presented Gaussian approach yielded its successful applicability for color and pc-LEDs but a minor accuracy for blue and green LEDs.