PRODUCT REVIEW
CENTRIC SERIES™ Flicker-Free Non-Dimmable Power Supply for LED Strip
★
Flickers and causes health problems
I am a strong supporter of Waveform in general because their CENTRIC HOME Flicker-Free A19 10W LED Bulbs and their SUPERWARM 1700K Flicker-Free A19 10W LED Bulbs actually are flicker-free and healthy for me. I strongly encourage everyone to buy those bulbs and to support Waveform since they are making efforts to manufacture flicker-free lighting products. So it is with great disappointment that I have to report that Waveform has missed the mark with the CENTRIC SERIES™ Flicker-Free Non-Dimmable Power Supply for LED Strip. While their flicker is low enough to not be obvious in a slow-motion smart phone video, the strip lights connected to this power supply are not flicker-free. Their flicker is evident in the attached photo, showing a flicker meter reading of 2.325% at 120 Hz, although the flicker within a subset of the graph is about 1.3%. We testing this power supply connected to a Waveform 4000K Centric Daylight strip in an attempt to find truly-flicker free LED lights for commercial use. I experience serious health effects from any light flicker. While these lights were only immediately vaguely spatially disorienting for me, I developed more serious symptoms when testing this light for multiple hours in a way that was not only reproducible, but started happening more quickly and with greater severity on subsequent days. Symptoms included headache, spatial disorientation, nausea, loss of appetite, extreme fatigue, extreme inability to concentrate, loss of short-term memory, hypersomnia, and inability to balance with my eyes closed. Symptoms lingered for multiple days after leaving the lights. Find my review of the existing scientific research into the health effects of light flicker by searching for FlickerSense Health. I have also shared more details of this and other testing. While I cannot speak for all individuals sensitive to flicker, I can report that this power supply does not produce light that is safe for me and our data show that it is not flicker-free. The inhibition of my short-term memory and loss of ability to concentrate prevents me from working in this light, even if I could manage to push through the other symptoms. While this power supply creates less flicker than those from other companies, it isn’t close to being flicker-free. Please, Waveform, create completely flicker-free power supplies and please do not use the “flicker-free” label for products that produce flicker. Please provide graphs of light output vs. time along with calculated flicker statistics for your products. UPDATE- Response to Waveform's reply: I agree that these lights fall under the IEEE 1789 "No Observable Effect" (NOEL) recommendation. While the phrase "No Observable Effect" gives the impression that the recommendation was based on studying the health effects of LED flicker and determining what level of flicker is safe for sensitive individuals, this is not at all the case. Instead, NOEL was based on an estimate of the point at which about half of the individuals in small groups of 10-14 normal observers in 3 studies are consciously aware that they can see light flicker, rather than being consciously unaware that the light flickered [Bullough et al. (2012), Roberts & Wilkins (2012), and Perz et al. (2015)]. People in potentially sensitive groups, like those with migraine, dry eye, or concussion were not included in these studies. The IEEE 1789 NOEL recommendation makes the assumption that if less than half of normal control people can see the flicker, then the flicker won't harm human health. There isn't any scientific basis for this assumption. The IEEE report emphasizes the need for further research, but no mechanism was created to define the parameters of such research, to fund the research, or to provide a way to collect reports of adverse health effects of LED lights from the public. I encourage the lighting community to remember that there are not yet any recommendations for flicker that are based on actual health data for LED flicker. I encourage government agencies to create a mechanism for collecting such health data so that meaningful regulations to protect the public may be created. In the meantime, I beg the lighting industry to voluntarily produce safe, flicker-free lighting. Currently, the lighting industry is benefitting from the fact that devices with flickering LEDs are not regulated like medical devices, requiring safety testing before release to the public, even though flickering light is known to have medical effects for at least a subset of people."
