The Value of Darkness: A Moral Framework for Urban Nighttime Lighting

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Abstract

The adverse effects of artificial nighttime lighting, known as light pollution, are emerging as an important environmental issue. To address these effects, current scientific research focuses mainly on identifying what is bad or undesirable about certain types and uses of lighting at night. This paper adopts a value-sensitive approach, focusing instead on what is good about darkness at night. In doing so, it offers a first comprehensive analysis of the environmental value of darkness at night from within applied ethics. A design for values orientation is utilized to conceptualize, define, and categorize the ways in which value is derived from darkness. Nine values are identified and categorized via their type of good, temporal outlook, and spatial characteristics. Furthermore, these nine values are translated into prima facie moral obligations that should be incorporated into future design choices, policy-making, and innovations to nighttime lighting. Thus, the value of darkness is analyzed with the practical goal of informing future decision-making about urban nighttime lighting.

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Reducing the ecological consequences of night-time light pollution: options and developments

Kevin Gaston, Thomas W Davies, Jonathan Bennie … (2012)

1. Much concern has been expressed about the ecological consequences of night-time light pollution. This concern is most often focused on the encroachment of artificial light into previously unlit areas of the night-time environment, but changes in the spectral composition, duration and spatial pattern of light are also recognized as having ecological effects. 2. Here, we examine the potential consequences for organisms of five management options to reduce night-time light pollution. These are to (i) prevent areas from being artificially lit; (ii) limit the duration of lighting; (iii) reduce the ‘trespass’ of lighting into areas that are not intended to be lit (including the night sky); (iv) change the intensity of lighting; and (v) change the spectral composition of lighting. 3. Maintaining and increasing natural unlit areas is likely to be the most effective option for reducing the ecological effects of lighting. However, this will often conflict with other social and economic objectives. Decreasing the duration of lighting will reduce energy costs and carbon emissions, but is unlikely to alleviate many impacts on nocturnal and crepuscular animals, as peak times of demand for lighting frequently coincide with those in the activities of these species. Reducing the trespass of lighting will maintain heterogeneity even in otherwise well-lit areas, providing dark refuges that mobile animals can exploit. Decreasing the intensity of lighting will reduce energy consumption and limit both skyglow and the area impacted by high-intensity direct light. Shifts towards ‘whiter’ light are likely to increase the potential range of environmental impacts as light is emitted across a broader range of wavelengths. 4. Synthesis and applications. The artificial lightscape will change considerably over coming decades with the drive for more cost-effective low-carbon street lighting solutions and growth in the artificially lit area. Developing lighting strategies that minimize adverse ecological impacts while balancing the often conflicting requirements of light for human utility, comfort and safety, aesthetic concerns, energy consumption and carbon emission reduction constitute significant future challenges. However, as both lighting technology and understanding of its ecological effects develop, there is potential to identify adaptive solutions that resolve these conflicts.

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Limiting the impact of light pollution on human health, environment and stellar visibility.

Christopher D. Elvidge, Fabio Falchi, Abraham Haim … (2011)

Light pollution is one of the most rapidly increasing types of environmental degradation. Its levels have been growing exponentially over the natural nocturnal lighting levels provided by starlight and moonlight. To limit this pollution several effective practices have been defined: the use of shielding on lighting fixture to prevent direct upward light, particularly at low angles above the horizon; no over lighting, i.e. avoid using higher lighting levels than strictly needed for the task, constraining illumination to the area where it is needed and the time it will be used. Nevertheless, even after the best control of the light distribution is reached and when the proper quantity of light is used, some upward light emission remains, due to reflections from the lit surfaces and atmospheric scatter. The environmental impact of this "residual light pollution", cannot be neglected and should be limited too. Here we propose a new way to limit the effects of this residual light pollution on wildlife, human health and stellar visibility. We performed analysis of the spectra of common types of lamps for external use, including the new LEDs. We evaluated their emissions relative to the spectral response functions of human eye photoreceptors, in the photopic, scotopic and the 'meltopic' melatonin suppressing bands. We found that the amount of pollution is strongly dependent on the spectral characteristics of the lamps, with the more environmentally friendly lamps being low pressure sodium, followed by high pressure sodium. Most polluting are the lamps with a strong blue emission, like Metal Halide and white LEDs. Migration from the now widely used sodium lamps to white lamps (MH and LEDs) would produce an increase of pollution in the scotopic and melatonin suppression bands of more than five times the present levels, supposing the same photopic installed flux. This increase will exacerbate known and possible unknown effects of light pollution on human health, environment and on visual perception of the Universe by humans. We present quantitative criteria to evaluate the lamps based on their spectral emissions and we suggest regulatory limits for future lighting. Copyright © 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

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Effects of artificial light at night on human health: A literature review of observational and experimental studies applied to exposure assessment.

Yongmin Cho, Seung-Hun Ryu, Byeo Ri Lee … (2015)

It has frequently been reported that exposure to artificial light at night (ALAN) may cause negative health effects, such as breast cancer, circadian phase disruption and sleep disorders. Here, we reviewed the literature assessing the effects of human exposure to ALAN in order to list the health effects of various aspects of ALAN. Several electronic databases were searched for articles, published through August 2014, related to assessing the effects of exposure to ALAN on human health; these also included the details of experiments on such exposure. A total of 85 articles were included in the review. Several observational studies showed that outdoor ALAN levels are a risk factor for breast cancer and reported that indoor light intensity and individual lighting habits were relevant to this risk. Exposure to artificial bright light during the nighttime suppresses melatonin secretion, increases sleep onset latency (SOL) and increases alertness. Circadian misalignment caused by chronic ALAN exposure may have negative effects on the psychological, cardiovascular and/or metabolic functions. ALAN also causes circadian phase disruption, which increases with longer duration of exposure and with exposure later in the evening. It has also been reported that shorter wavelengths of light preferentially disturb melatonin secretion and cause circadian phase shifts, even if the light is not bright. This literature review may be helpful to understand the health effects of ALAN exposure and suggests that it is necessary to consider various characteristics of artificial light, beyond mere intensity.

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Author and article information

Contributors

Taylor Stone: +31 (0)15 2785619 , t.w.stone@tudelft.nl

Journal

Journal ID (nlm-ta): Sci Eng Ethics

Journal ID (iso-abbrev): Sci Eng Ethics

Title: Science and Engineering Ethics

Publisher: Springer Netherlands (Dordrecht )

ISSN (Print): 1353-3452

ISSN (Electronic): 1471-5546

Publication date (Electronic): 8 June 2017

Publication date PMC-release: 8 June 2017

Publication date (Print): 2018

Volume: 24

Issue: 2

Pages: 607-628

Affiliations

ISNI 0000 0001 2097 4740, GRID grid.5292.c, Ethics and Philosophy of Technology Section, , Delft University of Technology, ; Jaffalaan 5, 2628 BX Delft, The Netherlands

Article

Publisher ID: 9924

DOI: 10.1007/s11948-017-9924-0

PMC ID: 5876417

PubMed ID: 28597220

SO-VID: be2a615b-a74d-493e-881c-398fbf0a0a1d

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Open AccessThis article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License ( http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made.

History

Date received : 2 February 2017

Date accepted : 16 May 2017

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ScienceOpen disciplines: Ethics

Keywords: darkness,light pollution,artificial light at night,nighttime illumination,design for values,environmental ethics

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ScienceOpen disciplines: Ethics

Keywords: darkness, light pollution, artificial light at night, nighttime illumination, design for values, environmental ethics

The Value of Darkness: A Moral Framework for Urban Nighttime Lighting

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Hogrefe: SDG 5 Gender Equality

Most cited references 28

Reducing the ecological consequences of night-time light pollution: options and developments

Limiting the impact of light pollution on human health, environment and stellar visibility.

Effects of artificial light at night on human health: A literature review of observational and experimental studies applied to exposure assessment.

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