Question: Can people produce a light that insects are not attracted to? So that when you are out camping the light you use wont be a beacon for attracting insects this could apply to the lights on car also?

Aisling Kerr answered on 11 Nov 2015:

That is a very interesting question – it started a long debate in my group! Insects use the moon at night to navigate so it is thought that they are attracted to light that has a wavelength of 300 – 420 nm – this is UV and blue light. Insects don’t seem to show much of an attraction to red light. That is why insect light traps use blue light as there source of attraction. But people also don’t like red light too much and a car light that produced only red light wouldn’t be that useful. Insects are also slightly attracted to the heat of the light. LEDs fix both of these problems – they don’t produce heat and can be built to not emit UV light. To produce white light, LEDs mix a few colours together and can sometimes show more of one colour then another. The bluish “hard white” LEDs might still draw in insects but the yellowish “soft white” won’t be as attractive to them. I hope that answers the question for you! There is some light that probably won’t attract too many insects if any but they may not be useful for everything!