Students are experiencing headaches and migraines as a result of the all-new LED lighting in classrooms and hallways put in over the summer.
LED lighting can have the same effect as looking at a computer screen, producing blue light -- a well-known contributor to causing headaches, according to the Seattle Clinical Research Center.
There have been numerous passes to the nurse’s office in the past three weeks because of students’ headaches and migraines, according to SM East nurse Stephanie Ptacek.
“Maybe 10 to 20 [a day],” Ptacek said.
Ptacek has noticed many students complaining about the new LED lighting, since LED lights often flicker and cause light sensitivity for certain people, according to Ptacek.
She believes this, combined with the return to school, is playing a role in the outbreak of headaches.
“It could be the light,” Ptacek said. “But it could also be that we're getting back on our devices for long periods of time.”
Ptacek also explains how light covers can be beneficial to prevent students from sensing the flickering. Some teachers have covers for their lights for this reason, such as Ptacek herself, Mr. Robert Bickers who teaches various social studies classes and others.
Students who have come to the nurse are frustrated about having a hard time focusing on their academics while their head is pounding. The students believe the new school lighting is causing their headaches as well.
Among the affected students are senior Chloe Swan and sophomore Nora Willey. Both Swan and Willey started to have frequent headaches within the first week of school, sometimes getting so bad as to becoming a migraine.
“I just started getting headaches after the first day,” Swan said. “Then pretty soon after that, every day there's some sort of headache issue.”
Swan is struggling to concentrate on her schoolwork, getting unexpected headaches day after day. Over the past couple of weeks, Swan has developed a better tolerance to the lighting. While she still has headaches at least once a day, they are much less severe.
Willey has had similar issues. When trying to focus on a quiz in her math class, Willey was distracted by a headache she had that morning, which was worse and worse due to the LED lights. Willey had to leave school and go home, away from the harsh LED lights, when it became a migraine. Having to leave class due to her headaches also affected Willey's academics.
“I wasn't there for notes [in math], so it caused stress,” Willey said.
Though it’s not one hundred percent certain to say that the lights are the source of students' recent headaches, it is still a concern either way regarding their effect on students’ academia, according to Ptacek.
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