© Soft Lights An example of Soft Lights at night.

Street Sceners, you have piqued the interest of professional street lighting experts around the country. Mark Baker is a recognized expert in street lighting who has made a difference in the way municipalities throughout the U.S. look at Light Emitting Diode (LED) streetlights.

Recently Barker brought sense and sensibility to the town of Warwick, Rode Island, and now joins us by corroborating the message we have been taking to Tallahassee top management, division directors, and elected representatives for more than two years. Welcome Mark Baker and many thanks.

The following is Mr. Baker's email letter to the City of Tallahassee.

Dear Tallahassee City Council,

We read the story about LED street lights.

Soft Lights is an advocacy group focused on educating decision makers about the emotional harm and eye damage caused by LED lights with a goal of convincing the decision makers to install soft, pleasant lighting that is safe for humans and the ecosystem.

More: Residents fired up over bright LED streetlights |Street Scene

While LED lights have advantages, there are also serious health problems associated with LED and with over lighting. Scientists have shown that artificial light at night has increased the risk of breast cancer by as high as 33%. Artificial light at night is also causing sleep disorders and severely impacting the ability of wildlife to succeed.

Studies have shown that bright lights do not reduce crime. Overall light pollution across the planet has been increasing at an unsustainable rate of 2% per year.

Your residents are right to complain about high glare, high blue-content LED lights. Many cities across the US have made the same mistake of installing 3000K, 4000K and 5000K LED lights and are now having to replace them with human-safe lighting.

We at Soft Lights would like to make our recommendations so that your town can save energy, but without harming human or ecosystem health.

1) Set color temperature maximums of 2700K for business districts, 2200K for residential areas and 1800K for sensitive habitats. Anything over 2700K contains dangerous levels of blue wavelength light. The original maximum set by the American Medical Association in 2016 was 3000K, but as additional science has come out, the AMA now says to use as low a color temperature as possible. We find that anything over 2700K is uncomfortable.

2) Shield (no light trespass) and diffuse (no bare-diode) the LEDs. Keep the light focused where it needs to go. Bare-diode LEDs are far too intense for human eyes and must be diffused and softened.

3) Insist that your provider guarantee that there is no sub-sensory flicker.

4) Begin the process of eliminating the tall street poles. The reason for this is because cars now come equipped with Automated Braking Systems and by 2022 all new cars will have this ABS system. Therefore, we no longer need to light the roadway where cars travel because of car headlights and the ABS systems. Replace the tall poles with 3 foot tall bollards as needed to softly light pedestrian and bike paths.

5) Brightness should be as low as possible. It's critical to preserve the darkness for health and safety. Severely dim or put lights on motion detectors for late at night. Humans, frogs, birds and insects all need a dark night for quality sleep or for navigation.

6) Ban LED billboards. Shining LED into people's eyes is uncivil, steals our liberties and is a dangerous distraction.

7) Ban LED strobe lights on utility trucks, police cars, garbage trucks, stop signs, radio towers, etc. Shining high intensity strobe lights into people's eyes causes severe mental anguish for many and greatly reduces vision for all.

8) Set a maximum of Class 3 on the Bortle scale of light pollution for the entire town. We believe that viewing the million billion stars at night is a fundamental human right.

P.S.: Brent Hollis, Exterior Lighting Product Development Manager for Solais Lighting Group in Frisco, Texas, is also paying close attention to what the City of Tallahassee is doing to mitigate the harmful effects of LED streetlights in Tallahassee.

Philip Stuart, (IMPAACT.org) is a retired Florida State Trooper, Traffic Operations Project Engineer and Forensics Expert Witness. Send questions to: crashsites@embarqmail.com

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This article originally appeared on Tallahassee Democrat: Streetlight expert illuminates the debate on LEDs | Street Scene