WELLNESS AUTHOR
Chad Dyer
HUMANS AND LUMENS n With stargazing season here, we
become more aware of light pollution but many are unaware of how it may impact your mental health.
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n 1994, the Northridge earthquake struck the city of Los Angeles at 4:30 a.m., causing a citywide power outage. Shortly after, the surrounding observatories received numerous calls from spooked residents claiming to see an ominous gray cloud in the sky. That gray cloud was the Milky Way. For many people, this was their first encounter with a dark sky clear enough to see the cosmos. Typically, a city like Los Angeles, and even cities much smaller, emit an overabundance of light that creeps into the night sky causing light pollution. Light pollution has numerous effects on the surrounding life: birds can crash in flight or forget to migrate altogether, plants may not grow as efficiently and the beautiful night sky is drowned in a haze of light.
hormone which helps you sleep. This allows your circadian rhythm to act as your body’s natural clock. It dictates when you feel awake and energized or when it’s time to turn in for the night and sleep. “(Our circadian rhythm), it’s (all about) the timing,” Hummel says. “It’s equally important to avoid light at night as it is to be exposed to it in the morning when you’re waking up.” This association with light plays a huge part in cueing our circadian rhythms. This is the same reason casinos are bright and don’t have windows. With no windows, regulated lighting and bright-colored ceilings, your body has trouble discerning the time and whether or not you need to sleep. Light pollution certainly affects our sleep schedule, but beyond sleep, does light pollution affect other aspects of our mental health? “You won’t find any scientist who says if you’re exposed to light, it’s going to make you depressed,” Hummel says. “It’s more appropriate to say light pollution could increase the risk of depression or other things.” Hummel explains that science has found that the tie between light pollution and mental health issues is largely correlation rather than causation. Health effects like heart disease, depression and even forms of cancer have been correlated to staying up late.
How Light Pollution Affects Our Mental Health
In short, we aren’t entirely sure how light pollution affects our mental health; the science behind it is still in its stages of infancy. “Your body is aware of what time it is by the intensity of light,” says Stephen Hummel, the Dark Skies Sr. Outreach Program Coordinator at McDonald Observatory. “We associate daytime as bright, blue light — like the sky. And blue light is hardly found, naturally, at night.” According to Hummel, our exposure to light affects our sleep patterns, also known as our circadian rhythms. Your circadian rhythm does many things, but its most notable job is regulating melatonin, the
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