“The human circadian system is exquisitely sensitive to the spectrum of light visible to the eye, especially blue wavelengths” – German-Spanish Astronomical Centre (2018)
Over the course of millions of years of evolution, biological systems on earth developed in concert with the day/night cycle. Recent technological inventions have allowed humans to add additional light into the daytime and to replace the natural night with artificial light. While these lighting inventions initially allowed us to perform tasks that were previously impossible, we have now reached the point where the amount of light we have added has overwhelmed the ability of the biological systems to function normally.
The goal of this set of chapters is to identify lighting conditions that are detrimental to society and to propose frameworks and regulatory structures that will reduce the tendency to add light during daytime and to promote protection of the natural night resource. The benefits of implementing these regulations are improved health, reduced energy usage and carbon pollution, restoration of damaged ecosystems and protection of our fundamental civil rights, including the right to view the million billion stars above us and the right not to have high intensity LED light beams shined directly into our eyes.
Light pollution is now a serious threat to human health and the viability of our ecosystem. Light pollution has been increasing at a rate of 2% per year for many years and continues to worsen. We are rapidly damaging the natural night resource which is a fundamental component of our DNA and circadian rhythms. The deployment of billions of LEDs to emit light beams means increases in eye damage, cancer, sleep disorders, and neurological harm in humans. This artificial light is also having devastating impacts on wildlife which are dependent on the natural night resources of star light and moonlight for navigation, foraging for food, and finding mates.
LED lights have also created another hazard because LEDs emit spatially non-uniform energies which are toxic, hazardous, and discriminatory. In addition, many LEDs emit high energy blue wavelength which has been shown to cause a myriad of health problems and ecosystem disruptions.
These chapters explain the fundamentals of light, the LED fraud, and the technologies that have been taking over the planet.