Film and panel explore relationship between health, safety and light pollution
How many stars can you see when you look into the night sky? This was just one of the questions posed by the film A City Dark, shown in the Kulynych Auditorium on March 27. The film explored the effects of light pollution on people, places, and animals as the narrator drove increasing distances from the city in search of visible stars in the sky.
Interviews with experts in various disciplines, including medicine, astronomy and biology were interspersed with stunning views of stars and shocking views of skies that never dim. The movie travelled from New York City to Arizona to Hawaii in search of answers to how our obsession with light might be removing an essential connection to the dark.
After the film, a panel comprised of University Police Chief Regina Lawson, Associate Vice President for Facilities and Campus Services, Jim Alty, Dr. Vaughn McCall, a sleep science specialist and Wake Forest Baptist Medical School and Paul Bogard, English professor and author of The Geography of Night responded to campus concerns about light pollution.
Often, people equate increased lighting with a safer campus. Lawson commented that the perception that crime occurs at night in dark areas is counter to the crime data from campus. Alty mentioned that many things go into making a place feel safe, not simply the lighting. In the end, it is not a zero-sum game. “Good lighting doesn’t just mean brighter lights,” Alty said.
Decreasing light pollution does not have to mean walking through a dark campus. Instead, Facilities and Campus Services can and does install light shields that direct light where it is needed instead of into the night sky. They are also working to replace outdated light bulbs with LEDs, which produce light that is easier to direct leading to decreased light pollution. Concerned students, faculty, and staff are invited to participate in a campus safety walking tour each fall that is a partnership between by Facilities and Campus Services and Student Government.
Dr. McCall emphasized the impact of light pollution on sleep health. As mentioned in the film, an increase in light pollution and the accompanying decrease in the quantity of deep sleep leads to a decrease in melatonin, which can have serious impacts for overall health and waking behavior. Some scientists even suggest a correlation between this decrease in melatonin and an increase in cases of breast cancer. “There is a belief that we control our own biology,” Dr. McCall said. “We insist on behaving in ways that are counter to how we are engineered.”
This event was made possible by the Office of Sustainability and the Center for Energy, Environment and Sustainability (CEES).
By Tiffany White and Caitlin Edwards