by Lazar Jovic, YourPace Contributor
PRESQUE ISLE, Maine—Picture a bustling city at night—the glow of streetlights, the shimmer of skyscrapers, the glare of billboards. City lights outshine the stars and neon signs dominate the skyline.
Since it causes damage, we call it light pollution. It’s a phenomenon often overlooked in urban life but affecting almost everything dear to us: the night sky, the health of ecosystems, and our well-being.
This artificial illumination spills into the night sky, drowning out the stars and disrupting the natural rhythms of darkness and light. But it’s not just urban areas that contribute to light pollution; even small towns and rural communities contribute to it with excessive outdoor lighting from homes, businesses, and roadways. It damages ecosystems and your health.
Nature’s nocturnal inhabitants—bats, owls, fireflies, sea turtles—rely on the cover of darkness for survival. But light pollution disrupts their behavior, such as migration patterns and their feeding and mating rituals. For some species, this happens on such a scale their population declines.
Our bodies are finely tuned to the natural rhythms of day and night. Take jet lags as an example. Artificial light at night can throw these rhythms out of balance. Exposure to excessive light at night has been linked to sleep disorders, disruptions in hormone production, and increased risk of chronic diseases.
This kind of pollution could be the easiest one to solve. One non-profit organization in Serbia is among the few in the world that educates the general public on solutions to light pollution.
Carpe Noctem, “seize the night” in Latin, run by a few enthusiastic individuals, hosted more than 40 lectures and visited around 20 schools, reaching an audience of some 600 individuals of all ages.
“We are the species of the day, and we feel comfortable over the day, when we move, work, and eat. We should be sleeping at night and not engaging in those activities since our body carries out various processes. That’s why we want to ‘conquer the night,’ in a way,” said Dr. Dajana Bjelajac, the president of Carpe Noctem.
One solution is to use responsible outdoor lighting practices, for example, in street lighting.
“Street lighting should be constructed in such a way that light hits the ground over 90 degrees. There’s no need to waste light over the line of the horizon, or even over the light bulb itself,” said Dr. Bjelajac.
He noted that architects and engineers could use this principle in their future projects for no extra cost.
Dr. Bojan Djecan of Carpe Noctem noted that the first step to making a difference is to eliminate unnecessary outdoor lighting in your house.
“When we talk about kelvins, light bulbs can be put in three categories,” he said “Those are warm white, white (neutral), and cold white. Warm white is the one we get from old, incandescent light bulbs, which have between 2,600 and 3,000 kelvins. These are the recommended kelvins for indoor lighting.”
These bulbs can help your body make melatonin, a hormone greatly affecting good sleep, in the right amount and at the right time.
To learn more, find an organization dealing with this issue in your area.
Cut on some light, turn your gaze skyward, and truly seize the night.
In addition to hurting wildlife and disrupting our sleep, light pollution erases the night sky (Photo Credit: Getty Images)
