For the 11th consecutive year, cities worldwide are turning their lights off today to mark Earth Hour in a global call to action on climate change, but the moment of darkness should also serve as a reminder, activists said, of another problem that gets far less attention — light pollution.
More than 80 percent of humanity lives under skies saturated with artificial light, scientists have calculated.
In the US and western Europe, that figure goes up to 99 percent of the population, most of whom cannot discern the Milky Way in the night sky.
Artificial lighting has been shown to disturb the reproductive cycles of some animals and the migration of birds that navigate using the stars, and to disorient night-flying insects.
For humans, circadian rhythms that regulate hormones and other bodily functions can also be thrown out of whack by too much light at night.
Even the most ardent critics of light pollution are not saying cities should go dark, or that lighting is not an essential element of urban life, but society needs to address a growing list of concerns, they said.
“In general, it’s getting worse,” International Dark-Sky Association president Diana Umpierre said of light pollution in her home state of Florida, and things are moving in the wrong direction.
“We are predicted to have 15 million more residents in the next 50 years” with all the extra lighting that entails, she said.
By contrast, in Chad, the Central African Republic and Madagascar — not coincidentally among the poorest nations in the world — three-quarters of people have a clear view of the heavens.
Arguably, no one suffers more from light pollution than astronomers, whose telescopes are blinded by the glare of urban glow.
In 1958 Flagstaff, Arizona — more than 2,100m above sea level — became the first sizeable city to curb night lighting, mainly to shield a major observatory.
One of the biggest challenges in fighting light pollution is convincing people that “brightness” is not synonymous with “safety,” Umpierre said.
“Sometimes it’s just the opposite,” she said, citing studies showing that people drive more carefully — and more slowly — on roads with less or no lighting at night.
Over the past 15 years, biologists, doctors, non-governmental organizations and even UNESCO have joined the fight against light pollution by detailing negative impacts to health and well-being.
In 2012, the American Medical Association (AMA) concluded that exposure to “excessive” night light “can disrupt sleep and exacerbate sleep disorders” and it called for more research into possible links to cancer, obesity, diabetes and depression.
Last year, the AMA raised another red flag, this time about LEDs.
Local governments in wealthy nations are racing to replace existing streetlights with LEDs, which consume less energy and last longer. In the US, 10 percent of public lighting has already switched over to LED.
That is good news for the fight against global warming, cutting down on fossil-fuel burning for electricity, but it might be bad news for health, the AMA said.
“Some LED lights are harmful when used as street lighting,” AMA board member Maya Babu said.
Not only do bluish, high-intensity lights create a view-obscuring glare, they have “five times greater impact on circadian sleep rhythms than conventional street lamps,” the AMA said.
The new technology also obscures our view of the night sky even more than traditional city lighting.
Bit by bit, citizens are starting to push back.
A petition circulating in Madrid is calling for a scientific study into the safety and health impacts of LED lighting. In Quebec and Montreal, along with Phoenix, Arizona, public pressure has already pushed city officials to install “yellow” LEDs, which are thought to be less disturbing.
PHISHING: The con might appear convincing, as the scam e-mails can coincide with genuine messages from Apple saying you have run out of storage For a while you have been getting messages from Apple saying “your iCloud storage is full.” They say you have exceeded your storage plan, so documents are no longer being backed up, and photos you take are not being uploaded. You have been resisting Apple’s efforts to get you to pay a minimum of ￡0.99 (US$1.33) a month for more storage, but it seems that you cannot keep putting off the inevitable: You have received an e-mail which says your iCloud account has been blocked, and your photos and videos would be deleted very soon. To keep them you need
For two decades, researchers observed members of the Ngogo chimpanzee group of Kibale National Park in Uganda spend their days eating fruits and leaves, resting, traveling and grooming in their tropical rainforest abode, but this stable community then fractured and descended into years of deadly violence. The researchers are now describing the first clearly documented example of a group of wild chimpanzees splitting into two separate factions, with one launching a series of coordinated attacks against the other. Adult males and infants were targeted, with 28 deaths. “Biting, pounding the victim with their hands, dragging them, kicking them — mostly adult males,
The Israeli military has demolished entire villages as part of its invasion of south Lebanon, rigging homes with explosives and razing them to the ground in massive remote detonations. The Guardian reviewed three videos posted by the Israeli military and on social media, which showed Israel carrying out mass detonations in the villages of Taybeh, Naqoura and Deir Seryan along the Israel-Lebanon border. Lebanese media has reported more mass detonations in other border villages, but satellite imagery was not readily available to verify these claims. The demolitions came after Israeli Minister of Defense Israel Katz called for the destruction of
SUPERFAN: The Japanese PM played keyboard in a Deep Purple tribute band in middle school and then switched to drums at university, she told the British rock band Legendary British rock band Deep Purple yesterday made Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi’s day with a brief visit to their high-profile superfan as they returned to the nation they first toured more than half a century ago. Takaichi’s reputation as an amateur drummer, and a fan of hard rock and heavy metal has been well documented, and she has referred to Deep Purple as one of her favorite bands along with the likes of Black Sabbath and Iron Maiden. “You are my god,” a giddy Takaichi said in English to Deep Purple drummer Ian Paice, presenting him with a set of made-in-Japan
RSS