JR East address suicides with blue lighting
East Japan Railway Company have installed blue light-emitting diode lights in all 29 stations of the Yamanote line as the number of suicides in Japan rises again. Although the company admit there is no scientific proof that blue lights deter suicide, the hope is that they will have an effect on people with troubled states of mind:
“We associate the color with the sky and the sea,” said Mizuki Takahashi, a therapist at the Japan Institute of Color Psychology, a private research center that was not involved in the lighting project. “It has a calming effect on agitated people, or people obsessed with one particular thing, which in this case is committing suicide.”
JR East has seen 68 platform suicides since March this year alone – up from 42 for the same period two years ago.
Tags: blue light, jr east, suicide, yamanote line
18/11/2009 00:21 
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