Remember my article on the development of lights throughout history? Well these days, one light in particular has been in the news lately, the incandescent light bulb! Few years ago, a ban was invoked at a federal level to many countries of the EU; specifically in Germany, where incandescent light bulbs were to be totally banned.

Ironically, this made demands for these incandescent light bulbs sore! Some believe that the ban was lobbied by large lighting companies to eliminate the presence of the very affordable light bulbs in the market in order to sell the more expensive light bulbs. Let’s not forget, incandescent light bulbs are basically the most widely used  bulbs around the  world; they have been lighting the way since the 1800’s. So why is it that they’re incrementally being banned in several countries? At the start of 2012, regular incandescent light bulbs were banned in Canada!   The ban stems primarily from researches conducted by Drs. Ott and Hollwich. In 1973, Dr. Ott conducted an experiment on four first-grade classrooms, in which two were fitted with standard cool-white fluorescent lights and the other two rooms were fitted with full-spectrum lights. The result of the experiment had shown that the classes that have been fitted with full-spectrum lights had an increased level in both behavioral and academia ability over the traditional incandescent light bulbs.     So far, most result of experiments conducted has shown similar results, justifying the complete ban on the basis that the continued and wide use of the incandescent bulbs would be harmful to the state of the nation’s health, in particular its workforce. Also, note that incandescent bulbs emit 95% of the energy as heat, rendering them very energy-un-efficient.

These make the case stronger when arguing to phase them out from public use. Provided that we are to continue on the path to more energy-efficient, energy-saving, and eco-friendly technologies, how can it be justified that countries in the EU have been systematically phasing these useless light bulbs out, and countries such as Australia and others are still using incandescent as the basic go-to lamp? Or is it really all lobbying from lighting manufacturers? Are they trying to push the more expensive lights by terminating the opportunity to buy the cheaper ones?