Hi everyone! In tandem with our class with Professor David Taylor, we’re going to be moving on to the less-talked-about forms of pollution, light and noise pollution, and we’ll be framing them in the context of our blog on tourism once again. As always, before we step into a few case studies, this post will serve to introduce the foundational concepts related to the topic(s) at hand.

Don’t make light of the issue

You might be wondering – what do we mean by light pollution? Isn’t light – city skylines and bright lampposts illuminating our neighbourhoods –  a symbol of progress and modernity?

While the presence of good lighting can be an indicator of development in some ways (good municipal electrical systems), what we are focusing on are three forms of light that basically come in the wrong place at the wrong time, with the wrong level of illumination. These sources of light then become a form of discomfort and disruption to our lives. The three forms are:

1. Skyglow – upward directed or reflected light, common in large metropolises (the things we gawk at on an airplane).
2. Spill light – light ‘trespassing’ onto spaces that aren’t intended (such as the lamppost on the street shining light into a HDB flat on the second floor).
3. Glare – excessively bright light (when you walk around Sports Hub and the floodlights catch your eye).

 

A pictorial representation of the different types of light pollution (Source: Lighting Research Centre) 

Yet perhaps what is most insidious about light pollution is the way it can harm our health without us being aware of it. In a study done on more than 100 000 women by McFadden et al. (2014), a link between an increased level of light in one’s room and one’s Body Mass Index (BMI) and waist circumference was found – the more light, the higher the BMI and waist circumference (taken as a proxy for obesity). The proposed causal link was the disruption to the circadian rhythm of humans – the regulators in our body affecting sleep – meaning that metabolism gets altered and gains in fat are increased. Who would have thought that ‘harmless light’ could do so much?

Heed the call on noise pollution

Similarly, in the case of noise pollution, the effects are insidious and rather shocking – something we’ll cover after we introduce some noise-related concepts. Noise pollution, in its essence, is unwanted sound, and has two main components to it:

1. The content of the noise itself, which can be split into two types: ‘broadband’ noises, which are noises spread over a few frequencies, meaning that the sound isn’t singular and has less pitch, e.g. vehicular traffic; and ‘tonal’ noises, whereby the sound has a distinctive pitch to it, like the squeaking of a skateboard or a bicycle bell.
2. The level of the noise itself, measured via decibels (dB), the unit for sound. The higher the decibel reading, the more intrusive it is – just imagine a horn blaring down the street as compared to the lift alarm ringing just outside the door.

With all of these, noise pollution is just annoying, right? Wrong. It can do far more damage than imagined – we certainly were shocked after reading a paper on the effects of noise pollution on a host of health issues. According to the World Health Organisation (2011), which conducted a study in Europe to measure the amount of years lost to different types of ill health (known as Disability Adjusted Life Years (DALY)) due to noise pollution, the results were astounding: a total of more than 1 million DALYs were lost from traffic noise in Wester Europe due to illnesses and health issues like sleep disturbances and even heart disease.

Turning the spotlight on…

Now that we have a basic idea of both light and noise pollution in terms of its forms and its unthinkable effects, we shall now turn the spotlight on a case study of light pollution. Stick around with us!

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References

Lighting Research Centre n.d., Example of useful light and light pollution from a typical pole-mounted outdoor luminaire, online image, viewed 21 October 2020, https://www.lrc.rpi.edu/programs/nlpip/lightinganswers/lightpollution/lightpollution.asp

McFadden, E, Jones, ME, Schoemaker, MJ, Ashworth, A, Swerdlow, AJ 2014, ‘The relationship between obesity and exposure to light at night:
cross-sectional analyses of over 100,000 Women in the breakthrough
generations study’, American Journal of Epidemiology, vol. 180, no. 3, doi: 10.1093/aje/kwu117

World Health Organisation 2011, Burden of disease from
environmental noise, viewed 21 October 2020, https://www.euro.who.int/__data/assets/pdf_file/0008/136466/e94888.pdf