I stopped into Dundee Elementary School several years ago to meet the reading specialist. I explained of my interest in helping children struggling to read. Bill Plumb, a member of the school board, happened to be in the room at the time. Bill said to me “Why is this such a big problem nowadays compared to years ago. “The reason, I said, is these lights” as I pointed to the old recycled fluorescent fixtures over our heads. I said when this school was built in the fifties they installed fluorescent fixtures and I am sure the kids have suffered ever since. I explained that colored filter overlays and colored Irlen filter lenses can combat the light. I also feel that the common occurence of stomach aches in elementary school there can be due to the lights. I, in fact, just took a complimentary set of 10 different color filter overlays to the school in order to help the children. It was National Reading Awareness Month.

Fluorescent lights made me just plain uncomfortable. They can make you anxious, antsy or fidgety. They can cause headaches including migraine headaches. They can make you tired or drowsy and can make it harder to listen to others such as the teacher. Performance can deteriorate. And the flicker rate can aggravate ADD.

When I was a freshman at the University of Michigan I lived in the South Quadrangle dormitory. Every evening I would eat dinner (admittedly starchy) and go straight to my room and turn on my flourescent desk light in order to begin studying. EVERY single time I immediately began falling asleep as though drugged and was literally forced to go to bed and try to get up later. Now, in retrospect, I feel it was the flourescent light that exhausted me. The nap did little good.