Blue Light Like That From Smartphones Linked To Some Cancers, Study Finds (cnn.com)

A new study, published Monday in the journal Environmental Health Perspectives, found that exposure to the kind of blue light emitted by outdoor LEDs, smartphones and tablets may increase your risk of breast or prostate cancer. The study compared previous exposure to artificial lights at night between approximately 2,000 breast or prostate cancer patients and approximately 2,000 controls living in Barcelona and Madrid. Slashdot reader al0ha writes: This study seems to say that exposure to LED light temperatures higher than 3,000 Kelvin suppresses melatonin because it contains increased blue light, and at least one city (Davis, California) has gone to the expense of removing higher temperature LED lights and replacing them with ones that have lower color temperatures. Specifically, the study found that "those exposed to high levels of outdoor blue light at night had around a 1.5-fold higher risk of developing breast cancer and a twofold higher risk of developing prostate cancer, compared with those who were less exposed," reports CNN. "Men exposed to high levels of indoor artificial light also had 2.8-fold higher risk of developing prostate cancer, according to the study."

Comments

Re:Bullshit

[manu0601]

They have the proposed mechanism: blue light causes your body to produce less melanin, which means less protection against natural sunlight. It is a hypothesis worth testing, anyway.

The story is about melatonin, the sleep-related hormone, not about melanin, the skin pigment.

Hence this is not about sunlight protection, but about weak sleep quality, which is already known to be statically linked to cancer

Re:Bullshit

[Anonymous Coward]

Not exactly sleep. Melatonin also regulates reproductive-related hormones that would support an effect on prostate and breast tissues.

Re:Bullshit

[hey!]

It's not that blue light that damages breast or prostate tissue directly. It's neurologically-mediated endocrine changes that have been well documented now for decades. It's only more recently that those endocrine changes have been linked to cancer.

The chain of causation is blue light -> retina -> optic nerve -> suprachiasmatic nucleus of the hypothalamus -> pineal gland -> {disrupted hormones including melatonin and serotonin} -> {multiple and widespread physiological disturbances including disturbed sleep and chronic inflammation} -> {breast and prostate cell damage, precise mechanisms unknown}.