Test standards ensure the safety of LED lighting products

Complying with the IEC62471 standard assures designers purchasing LED lighting components that they are safe to operate and can be sold worldwide.

LEDs have benefited from exponential performance improvements during the past 20 years due to their better efficiency and lower operating costs compared to incandescent and gas-discharge lamps. Because LED lights are made of a monolithic semiconductor material, they also are inherently more rugged than filament- or ballast-based lights. This has made LED lights extremely useful in industrial markets where uptime is a primary concern. Finally, LED lights can also be designed to generate almost any wavelength or color of light from the UV through the IR spectral band.

Most white LED lights manufactured today start as a blue LED with additional phosphor coating to create a broadband white light source. This has led to the development of brighter blue LEDs. Unfortunately, as the white LED becomes more prevalent, it also increases the danger of UV damage to human eyes. Above certain luminosities, UV, visible, and IR light can cause considerable photo-biological damage to eyes.

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