A popular study in the discourse of the effects of light pollution on humans is the association between light and obesity. The National Institute of Environmental Health Science (NIEHS) conducted a particularly large-scaled study, using data from over 43,000 women in America (NIEHS, 2019). Before the study commenced, they noted that women who slept with the light or television on were more likely to be obese at the start of…

Looking at the global distributions of breast and prostate cancer points us to consider its possible association with artificial light exposure at night (Figure 1&2).  Figure 1. Breast cancer rates (per 100,000). Source: (Haim & Portnov, 2013)Figure 2. Prostate cancer rates (per 100,000). Source: (Haim & Portnov, 2013) Not only do we detect an oddly similar global distribution of breast and prostate cancer, we also see that cancer incidence rates…

Artificial light pollution at night (ALAN) has yet again been associated with another aspect of our health — mental illness. Studies such as this have investigated the impact of outdoor light at night and its association with the emergence of depressive symptoms in the Netherlands. Analysed data revealed a positive association between the exposure to outdoor ALAN within the immediate residential environment and depressive symptoms. Other studies conducted on Japanese…

Did you know that travelling light can reach our brains? This reality alongside the increasing severity of global light pollution has led to a growing interest amongst researchers to investigate the impact of artificial light on the brain in recent years. In this post, we will be looking at a newly released study by Fasciani et al. (2020), on the effect of artificial light on dopamine neurons and possibly as…

Let’s have a quick check on your eyes right now. Are they irritated? Are you blinking excessively? Are the words glaring right off your screen? Perhaps, it’s time to give your eyes a little break… right after you finish reading this post! In this post, we will follow this study on the possible consequences of light pollution on [our] retina[s] to find out more about how light damages our eyes…