Projects - 6th Grade Earth Science: Human Impact On Earth
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Light Pollution: The Pollution that Lurks in the Shadows
Written By Jacob Gozen
Table Of Contents
Introduction
When you think of pollution, you usually think of bad air quality or chemicals in water. But did you know that light can pollute the environment? Light pollution is a serious topic that affects our mental health and the survival of wildlife. Light pollution is usually major in big cities. The glare and reflected light contribute to this pollution. In this article, I will explain how light pollution affects the environment, what might occur of the prolonged effects of light pollution, and solutions to prevent light pollution.
Evidence
Some examples of light pollution are big cities. Cities are very luminous, meaning they give off a lot of light. These lights may be useful for us at night, but that light can pollute the sky, and cause issues with organisms. These cities contribute to light pollution because the cities' lights are reflected from the ground, and are reflected into the sky, causing a glow. Alongside that, the lights will also cause glare.
As a result of this, this interrupts human's natural sleep habits, which can cause sleep deprivation, insomnia, and cancer. Furthermore, this also affects animals such as sea turtles because their instinct is to follow the moon's glow, However, cities with brighter lights attract sea turtles towards them resulting in a lower survival rate for sea turtles, endangering the species further than it already was.
In addition, other animals affected by light pollution include bees, squirrels, and songbirds.
Bees, for instance, are affected by light pollution, as it interrupts their natural active hours. The reflected light and glare cause bees to think it is daytime and continue working past their normal active hours
Like bees, squirrels will also stay up past their normal active hours. However, this causes them to wander off course because of the lack of sunlight and endangers them with nocturnal predators.
If you live in a big city, you may also notice at night it seems very bright outside, this is also a result of lights polluting the sky.
Conxcorp - Understanding Light Pollution
Reasoning
This evidence allows me to connect the evidence to understand that light pollution can cause human diseases. For instance, as stated earlier, without good sleep, it is possible that light pollution could also lead to Diabetes, Cardiovascular disease, and other diseases. This leads me to believe that sleep deprivation can cause cellular mutations based on your genetics and increase risks for Cancer and other genetic-based diseases.
The evidence also helps me infer that because certain species' habits are being affected, it could cause an imbalance in the food chain. For instance, when squirrels wander off in the darkness, it can cause their daytime predators to lose a chance to eat their prey, resulting in a lower survival rate for the predator. This also works the opposite way. A nocturnal predator would begin to eat more squirrels, breaking the balance by increasing the number of that predator and decreasing the squirrel.
This also applies to sea turtles. When sea turtles are born, they must rush to the ocean to avoid being eaten by seagulls and other predators. However, this instinct relies on the sunlight or the moonlight, the bright city lights cause the baby turtles to go towards the cities, making it easier for their predators to eat the fragile turtle.
Solution
There are many solutions to light pollution. Some solutions can be done individually and some require community work. For instance, some solutions you can do at home include, using fewer lights, using dimmer bulbs, and thicker curtains to block out light in your home. This should help reduce sleep deprivation and insomnia.
However, solutions like modifying street lights and changing large lights in public places will involve the city and your local community. For instance, street lights should be modified to have a cutoff that allows the light to point downwards. A major flaw in this solution is that the city would have to purchase more street lights to account for the less light being spread. So, the city could do a partial cutoff, which would solve that issue, reducing light pollution and beaming a necessary amount of light.
In addition, public places could also use dimmer bulbs, which would also reduce the effects of light pollution, however, it would make it harder to light those large places.
Summary
In summary, Light pollution is caused by the big lights in cities. This causes multiple effects on wildlife and humans. For animals, it could cause the survival rates of animals to drop and a change in their instincts. It can also cause mental health issues and many diseases for humans such as cancer and diabetes. These effects can lead to an imbalance in the food chain and possibly make cancer and diabetes more common. However, there are ways to combat this including using fewer lights at home, dimmer lightbulbs, and for cities, adding cutoffs that prevent light from causing glare and sky glow.
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