Residents all over North America and Western Europe report seeing purple street lights spanning their roads and highways throughout the night, but these lights aren’t new - their presence is only temporary
Driving through the streets of areas like Florida, Canada, and Massachusetts, residents are often used to the bright white glow of street lights on their way home. The familiar color helps drivers to see clearly amidst their dark surroundings and allows them to reach their destination safely with minimal distractions. But a new phenomenon has appeared, spanning the streets of North America and various European countries. Purple Street Lights. Residents recall being surprised as their usual scheduled night drives are interrupted by the bright luminous glow of purple lights, spanning for miles and making their once familiar streets look akin to something out of a horror movie. The question now is, what is the meaning of this? Will this be fixed? And what are the implications of these new night lights?
The first question that pops into the minds of those first exposed to the lights is, what happened to the old lights? To answer this question the first step is to understand how street lights work in the first place. To maximize energy efficiency, many areas worldwide switched from the old sodium lamps to LEDs to power street lights. These LED lights are the bright white street lights many of us are used to. The LEDs have a certain laminate on them that gives the lights the white coloration, without the laminate the lights would be a dark blue with a violet or purple tint. In the 15 years that these LED lights have been in use, the lamination has been wearing off, revealing a bright purple luminescence. This delamination could have a variety of causes from heat buildup to simple operational malfunction but the bottom line is that these ‘new’ purple lights are not new at all, rather these are the same LED lights we've known for years now. The main company that distributes these lights is known as Acuity, a giant in the industry delivering lights worldwide to numerous counties and states. A majority of the purple street lights have been traced back to this company and the organization is working hard with various other municipalities to find and remove these street lights to replace them with more functional lights. The lights themselves are not inherently harmful, as they are the same lights we have always had, simply a different color. Even so, the lights can have negative effects on eyesight: Having bright purple lights glaring through the streets at night could be jarring, additionally blue and violet-saturated light can harm people's ability to see details and differentiate between colors, especially at night. As various companies and law enforcement are working to have these lights removed, experts recommend wearing blue light filtering glasses when in range of these purple street lights.