Stop Ruining Starry Nights

Abstract

There has been an uptick in nearby lights from neighbors, which means an artificial fluorescence now blots out the sky at times, while leaking an ambient glow into my yard, my bedroom, everywhere. "Light pollution is absolutely growing," Ashley Wilson, director of conservation for the International Dark-Sky Association, an organization working to combat light pollution, told me. As Tyler Nordgren, Ph.D., an astronomer who previously worked for the National Park Service, explained it: Skyglow happens when light beams travel up into the air and encounter vapors, dust particles and pollutants, which then causes the light to scatter. In addition to light trespass, another type of light pollution is glare: when a bright object shines into our eyes, causing our night vision to become so overwhelmed we can no longer see faint objects. "If the signals - natural light and darkness - that tie those rhythms together is deregulated, it is potentially affecting many other functions in our bodies." Several studies have even shown an increased risk of cancer for those exposed to artificial light. In Ulster County, where my home is, there are dark-sky compliant lighting standards in the majority of the town's zoning statutes, but most of its municipal codes for residential areas don't include light pollution as a form of nuisance, according to Dennis Doyle, director of the county's planning department. "It's in all of our stories that darkness is scary and evil and light is progress and purity. I think it takes being out under the night sky and looking up and experiencing the darkness to not have those societal perceptions of the darkness," Ms. Foott said.