The Ecology Blog

Also known as photo-pollution or luminous pollution, light pollution is excess and intruding artificial light produced by humans. Like any other pollutants, excessive light has the potential to cause adverse ecological imbalance and health effects. Aside from that, light pollution causes sky glow which darkens the night sky, thus, obscuring the stars both for our viewing pleasure and for astronomical observations.

There are two main branches of light pollution. The first one is any type of annoying and interfering light that brings imbalance in the natural low light setting. The other one is indoor lighting that leads to human discomfort and adverse physical ailments. Since the advent of the global dark-sky movement during the 1980s, campaigns to save energy by alleviating light pollution has emerged.

Light pollution is deemed to be one of the adverse side effects of industrialization on the planet, global warming being the leading side effect. Sources of light pollution range from excessive energy usage in buildings and factories to billboard and other outdoor advertising. Badly designed street lighting facilities and overly lit domestic and commercial properties also cause different types of light pollution.

Aside from adversely affecting the environment by wasting energy, excess light also cause physical ailments such as hypertension, headaches, visual acuity, and very recently, artificial light was found out to increase carcinoma in human body which causes cancer.

It is difficult to determine what amount of light is considered to be reasonable and what are not. A lighting system may be just enough for one but is annoying for others. As in the case of advertisers who need more illumination for their billboards while greatly irritating the pedestrians or probably your neighbor’s porch light that go beyond the fence into your own window which causes sleep disruption on your part. It is even difficult to tell who should be responsible for such. However, groups such as the Dark-Sky Association provide standards that are usually followed by most city ordinance and bills against light pollution.

The important thing is to promote proper awareness on how excessive lighting adversely affect the planet, therefore, prohibiting its occurrences.