Light Pollution

A pollution that you can expect no one to talk about, is Light Pollution. Harmless at a glance, but poses an underlying depth of detriments. 

According to the Oxford Dictionary, Light Pollution is the existence of too much artificial light in the environment, for example from street lights, which makes it difficult to see the stars. But do the effects stop here? Most certainly not.

Disrupting the natural patterns of wildlife, an increase in the release of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, and complicated health problems are just fractions of the effects that the majority of the populace in urban areas are turning a blind eye to. So much coming from a small bulb hanging in your room huh? But why is the light radiation coming out of a simple light bulb posing such a threat you may ask?

Well, as the Nepali saying goes “Too much sugar is bitter”, and so is the case with bulbs. Few of them pose almost zero to negligible effect but in the context of urban areas housing 4.4 billion inhabitants, things get complicated.

Diving into the sole causes responsible for light pollution, the ones making the headlines are the residential lights and the dense populace.

This image helps us depict how light radiation in different areas across the United States varied over the past few decades. A general trend we can notice is that, as the population increased the brighter the night was.

When a lot of sources of light emitting devices are concentrated in a small area, light emitted from say a bulb usually directed towards the ground covers a broad surface area while also increasing the space of the glare region. And like all mediums, the ground also acts as a medium for reflection, and the waves of light travel onto the sky only to be deflected by the heavy clouds. This causes for the light particles to be trapped and its appearance is that of a haze during night time.

The image by Anezka Gocova, in “The Night Issue”, Alternatives Journal 39:5 helps for better visualisation.

To bring forth the gravity of this situation, a prime example would be the L. A power outage, caused by an earthquake in 1994. Panicking residents rushed to inform authorities through 911 to complain about the Milky Way Cluster they were seeing. (similar to the image below taken by Forest Wander)

Mind you, this astounding night view was something all humans around the world could see at night back when proper lighting hadn’t been invented.

Scientists fear that with time, even the brightest stars would stop shining if the light pollution isn’t controlled and that children in the coming generations won’t aspire to study astronomy as there would be nothing to see in the night sky.

Relating to the Nepali saying again, It’s the collective effort that counts. Some little countermeasures that one can take to reduce the drastic effects of light pollution are:

• Use motion-sensor lights.
• Direct outdoor lights downward.
• Replace bulbs with energy-efficient LEDs.
• Dim or lower-intensity outdoor lights.
• Install lighting only where needed.
• Use window coverings to block light.
• Don’t leave decorative lights on all night.