Wiskey
4 min readDec 31, 2022

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Wonder-fuel Erlijn, I was just talking to someone yesterday about the numerous troubles that I perceive as arising from modern light pollution, and this morning I find your great article in my “suggestions” email. Spot on for once Medium algorithm!!

Excuse the length of my comment, but I have a few points I would like to add to the conversation:

On the (rather esoteric) psychological level, not seeing the glory of the night sky, the “heaven’s above”, because of the light pollution, further removes us psychologically from our sense of place in the Cosmos, and this, in its subtle influence, is far more profoundly harmful to our mental-emotional well-being than we might give credit for. We are literally blocking out, or suppressing, the nightly awareness that this perspective affords us; of the fact that we are an integral part of something greater and grander. We are actively lessening our experience of awe and wonder, which are so humbling and therefore nourishing and harmonising to the individual and collective human spirit.

This has a cyclical impact (of a downwardly spiralling nature) in that we find, in our detached-from-the-rest-of-the-Universe state, that it is much easier to increase polluting and degrading our homes, our living environment and that of the planet as a whole, because we are disengaged from the knowledge of our belonging to the greater whole.

On a rather tangential tack, I'd like to question our Western obsession with safety.

Does public lighting in urban areas actually make our human lives safer? Safer from what? Is this sense of “being safe” a healthy thing to nurture or does it have the overall effect of increasing our fearfulness?

Perhaps we are inviting less truly “safe” living conditions by enjoying social activities late into the night, when it is EVERY night. What does such sustained nocturnal revelling do to the human psyche and body in the long term? Don’t get me wrong – I have been that young clubber, getting home as the milkman is delivering his bottled bovine nourishment (milkmen are of course virtually extinct in the modern western world now too!), and even today I tend to work till at least midnight. With our excessive nocturnal living and working habits though, we are disrupting our own natural sleep cycles which is having a serious knock-on effect on our overall health in the long run, pushing ourselves and the animals and insects we share the planet with, further out of balance.

My biggest gripe though in the arena of light pollution, is actually the revolutionary new lights that have accelerated the pollution revolution: Light Emitting Diodes. LEDs. Incredibly versatile, low energy breakthrough technology that has transformed the lighting industry and by turn, our everyday life.

Over the last 25 years it is estimated that global light pollution has grown between 270% - 400%. This is a very real growing problem.

Because my eyes are very light-sensitive, and the back of my eyes actually hurt from the street lights, car head lamps and virtually every other light source the modern world now uses, some years ago I began to do some research, and uncovered more than I bargained for. There is a very real hidden danger to human health from LEDs. A small percentage of people in the general population like myself feel noticeable pain from having LED light shine directly in our eyes, but LEDs are damaging EVERYONE’S retinas. A serious eyesight catastrophe looms!

Relieved that I wasn’t just being an oversensitive wuss with a low pain threshold, I further discovered that LEDs are also damaging our ATP production. Adenosine triphosphate (ATP) is a crucial organic compound that is so precious to all known forms of life, that we humans produce our own bodyweight of it every single day, because we use so much of the stuff to provide energy, muscle contraction, chemical synthesis and a whole load of other vital operations in our physical systems. We even need it for functional DNA and RNA, and if our ATP production were to suddenly stop altogether for some reason, we would only live for about 9 minutes.

LEDs are breaking down our ATP production. It is not good news!

My last point... back in the 1990s I was visiting some friends in Hampstead in London, and when I arrived for dinner, their street lights were emitting a sharp bluish white glare, rather than the old familiar orange glow of phosphorescent lamps, reminiscent of candle light. It was shocking and quite disturbing. A few months later my friends told me the local council’s experiment in LED street lighting had been terminated and the phosphorescent lights reinstated because of the drastically detrimental effect they were observing on wildlife and the complaints from residents whose sleep had been negatively affected.

Circadian rhythms are so out of whack now due to universal uptake (and even imposed by law now in the UK!) that we are facing numerous health crises that excessive LED light pollution contribute greatly to.

I shall step down from my soapbox now, and bid you all a less-bright happy New Year.

Thank you so much for your article Erlijn. Keep up the good work!

Wiskey.

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Wiskey
Wiskey

Written by Wiskey

Writing about art, life, relationships and meaning. In story, essays and poetry. www.wiskey.art www.icsius.com

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