What affects does light pollution have on people, environment and climate in the United States?

Source: Image from the National Park Service

What is Light Pollution?

Light Pollution is excessive artificial light that causes a disruption in our environment. It's an issue that, is, and has been, overlooked for a very long time. The United States has become increasingly brighter every year, but the real question is why aren't more people noticing? Change Blindness, a term coined by Ronald A. Rensink, occurs when something changes in our environment without the individual noticing the change has taken place. Most individuals aren't recognizing the changes happening around them overtime, because they are small and slow changes. Not only do we have more outdoor lighting in the United States, new LED technology has made lighting brighter and more cost effective. The areas around light pollution I'm most concerned with is CO2 emissions, human health, ecosystems and wildlife.

Measuring Light Pollution

Light pollution is measured using the Bortle Scale (1-9). Nine is considered a washed out, bright sky due to an excessive amount of light pollution and a one is considered to be an excellent dark sky with little to no light pollution.

Source: Cloudy Nights

Wasted Energy

Source: Dark Sky

The amount of energy used for outdoor lighting could power 49 million passenger vehicles for one year.

Source: Ach Daily

A way to avoid light from being used in-efficiently is using the proper shields on street lights that angle the light down rather than light being dispersed up. This reduces light pollution into the night sky.

Source: Dark Sky

The US Department of Energy reports that “well under 1% of light generated by luminaires reaches an occupant’s eye.” This means 99% of the time, we don't use artificial light to interpret our surroundings (Dark Sky).

Source: Grist

CO2 Emissions

Emissions from outdoor lighting has contributed to 15 million tons of carbon dioxide emitted each year according to the U.S. Department of Energy.

Human Health

Humans exposed to artificial night at all hours of the night has a detrimental affect to human body. It's been scientifically proven artificial light disrupts melatonin production in the brain which is linked to weakened sleep patterns. A lack of good quality sleep has been linked to heart disease and cancer.

Source: Chrono Biology

Source: Science Direct

Ecosystems and Wildlife

It has been observed that birds that live in areas where there is an abundant of light pollution change their singing and mating patterns around artificial light.

Light pollution and artificial light has caused many birds to become disoriented and change their migration patterns.

Bright artificial light from infrastructure has caused birds to ocassionally fly into buildings.

Solutions to Combat Light Pollution

Ways we can combat light pollution are shutting off lights that are not in use, minimize the use of lighting, using lighting where the lighting faces down toward the ground rather than up, use LED lighting, create new city ordnances that call for dimmer lights to be used, use motion detection lights, and get involved to help solve this problem.

Theoretical Framework

Source: Science Direct

My theoretical framework reflects the main topics I wanted to cover in my research; health, environment, infrastructure, and air pollution. As shown above, everything is connected. What we are exposed to can change our behavior and our health. This diagrams allows us to see the big picture and break things down to see all the moving parts within the system.

Sources:

Light Pollution City - https://starwalk.space/en/news/light-pollution

How We Measure Light Pollution (cloudy nights) - https://www.cloudynights.com/topic/701406-any-comments-on-astron-picture-on-bortle-scale/

Wasted Energy - https://www.darksky.org/light-is-energy-estimating-the-impact-of-light-pollution-on-climate-change/

CO2 from Light Pollution - https://www.darksky.org/15-million-tons-of-carbon-dioxide-emitted-each-year-on-residential-outdoor-lighting-in-the-u-s/

Street Lamp Light Pollution - https://www.archdaily.com/977131/how-to-reduce-light-pollution-with-street-light-design

Coal Power Plant: https://grist.org/climate-energy/coal-plant-pollution-can-be-deadly-even-hundreds-of-miles-downwind/

Co2 Produced from Residential Housing: https://www.darksky.org/15-million-tons-of-carbon-dioxide-emitted-each-year-on-residential-outdoor-lighting-in-the-u-s/

Human Artificial Light: https://www.chronobiology.com/constant-exposure-artificial-light-damaging-may-think/

Bird Image - https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0048969721070625