The Dangers of Light Pollution
Electric lighting has become such a part of modern society that it’s easy to overlook the dangers it can present. We’ve become a 24-hour world with cities that don’t sleep and skylines that never get the chance to see the stars — and it turns out that the effects of all this light on human and animal health can be devastating.
Light pollution disrupts our natural sleep cycle, altering levels of melatonin and other important hormones. This may lead to sleeping issues, daytime drowsiness and health problems like diabetes, obesity and even cancer. The light can interfere with natural changes in outside air composition at night, leading to increased smog in the atmosphere. Nighttime lighting can also create issues for wildlife, causing problems with migration, feeding and reproduction. We're just barely beginning to understand the impact of this problem. Here is more on the dangerous effects of light pollution.
Light Disrupts Our Natural Rhythm
Our brains rely on light to let us know when we should be waking up and when it’s time to go to sleep. In the absence of artificial lighting, melatonin production starts increasing as soon as the sun goes down, reaching its highest concentration around midnight. Along with increased melatonin levels come reduced body temperature, slowed metabolism, decreased appetite and increased sleepiness.
Artificial lighting defies that natural rhythm by exposing us to light when our bodies should (in the natural course of things) be adjusting to the dark. Even a street lamp outside a bedroom window can disrupt a person’s sleeping patterns, but the light pollution we create for ourselves indoors can be just as bad or worse.
According to the International Dark-Sky Association, we’re exposing ourselves to increasing amounts of LED lights. These powerful, bright sources of light often give off generous amounts of blue light, which is five times more disruptive on melatonin production as incandescent light. Often, the results are sleep disturbances at night and reduced functioning during the day. The excessive light exposure may also lead to health problems that include cardiovascular disease, diabetes, obesity and even cancer.
Light Worsens Smog Conditions
All those street lamps and outdoor lighting can affect more than your body's rhythm. They can also disrupt the air’s natural cleaning process. A chemical called nitrate radical, which sunlight destroys, is able to accumulate during the night; this chemical neutralizes nitrogen oxide, one of the components that contributes to ozone production.
Unfortunately, electric lighting also destroys nitrate radical, so it can’t do its job as effectively. This results in heavier smog conditions, which can exacerbate asthma and cause other health issues.
Light Confuses Wildlife
Light pollution can also have profound effects on our ecosystem, disrupting the eating and breeding behaviors of birds, reptiles, fish, insects and other animals. Many of them rely instinctively on moonlight to direct them where they need to go. Artificial lighting can disorient them, resulting in adult turtles never reaching vital breeding grounds or their young never finding the sea. Artificial lighting behind windows also causes birds to slam into towers and high-rise buildings. Light can make frogs withhold mating calls and populations of moths to collapse or even disrupt bat feeding behaviors. The list on this is extensive and devastating.
Electric lighting has transformed our world in some incredible ways, but it’s come at a price. You can reduce the effects it has on your personal health by putting blackout curtains on bedroom windows and limiting exposure to electronic screens at night. Programs like F.lux and Twilight reduce the amount of blue light screens emit in the evening, making them less disruptive to sleep patterns. Take measures to protect yourself, and work to minimize the impact light pollution has on you and your family — for your health. As for the rest of the world, you can get involved in light pollution activism by checking out the resources at Dark Sky.
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