Reference Library

These research articles and studies show how light pollution adversely affects your life, security, and environment.

Higher Breast-Cancer Rates in Brightly Lit Cities (February 2008)

  • Using satellite photos of Earth at night, researchers in Israel find that women who live in neighborhoods with large amounts of nighttime illumination are up to 73% more likely to get breast cancer than those who live in darker areas.

Researchers Discover Second Light-sensing System in Human Eye (December 2007)

  • New research on blind subjects has bolstered evidence that the human eye has a second, separate light-sensing system that tells our body when it is day or night.

Graveyard Shift Work Linked to Cancer (November 2007)

  • International Agency for Research on Cancer, the cancer arm of the World Health Organization, is adding overnight shift work as a probable carcinogen. One likely cause? Reduced melatonin production caused by exposure to light during sleep.

The Dark Side: Making War on Light Pollution (August 2007)

  • Writer David Owen explores what's become of star-filled night skies — and what's being done to get them back.

Darkened Streetlights Fail to Raise Crime Rate (June 2004)

  • To save money, officials turned off 4,000 (17%) of the streetlights in Des Moines, Iowa, and despite concerns from citizens the rate of vandalism, burglary, and robbery declined by 3½%.

The Chicago Alley Lighting Project (April 2000)

  • This study attempted to measure the effect of increased alley lighting on crime rates. After one year, crime in the area with increased lighting actually increased by 21%.

Preventing Crime: What Works, What Doesn't, What's Promising (1996)

  • This seminal 600-page metastudy prepared for Congress considers many possible relationships with crime. The seven paragraphs allocated to lighting and crime (in Chapter 7) argue that there's no solid link between increased lighting and security/safety.

No Light at Night: Nighttime Blackouts and Vandalism

  • A report by the California Energy Extension Service describes how school districts reduced nighttime vandalism dramatically by turning off security lights.