Agree with you, I've been a cyclist all my life and seen this coming since I worked myself also on arc-discharge lighting research which was bad enough (My bad!) and has now been superseded by LED lighting which is even worse. Another place I see it as a hazard is at home with LED monitors, mine is like a radar antenna that focuses all the light at where our head sits, I daren't use it at more than about 15% brightness, it lights the whole room, even at this level. I also have written in medium how I have retina damage and possible neurological problems (Its under investigation), I have to ask if it might have something to do with having my eyes lasered with LEDs every day.
The problem with white LED lighting is that it is based actually on the highest possible single frequency of LED, which is blue, but this is being developed, and will probably go to ultraviolet, so as to obtain a more even (Less blue) spread of light. The single frequency is used to excite a layer of phosphor which then emits at all frequencies up to the excitation frequency. This is how broad spectrum white light is emitted from the cheapest form of white LEDs. So the blue light is still there, just accompanied by light at all the other frequencies we can see. The highest energy is in the higher frequencies, photons at higher frequency are much more likely to cause damage than lower. Hence the most damaging light from the sun is the light above the band we can see, its up in the ultraviolet area. The most damaging sunglasses one could wear, would be those that look very dark to the rays we can see, but clear to rays above what we can see. Our eyes would react to those by the pupil dilating, allowing the full power of the UV to shine in.
Even opticians use LED based lighting now to do our eye examinations, after the pupil has been artificially dilated by drugs for that - its interesting they believe retina damage is always progressive, every time they look, the damage is worse, surprise surprise.
I see this as just another manifestation of the obvious hazard to health that all business for profit actually is, its just another way to inflict damage which will generate profit for those dispensing expensive management of conditions, never a cure.
Sorry, you picked a pet subject of mine, I ranted a little, hope you don't mind :)
