McLean’s Envirothon club and Longfellow Middle School’s Eco-Action team co-sponsored a Dark Skies Presentation and Astronomy Night on Jan. 15. The event was hosted to educate the McLean community about the harmful effects of light pollution and featured presentations from guest speakers, information stands and a stargazing portion which allowed students to see through a telescope.
The event was designed to spread awareness on the growing problem of light pollution, which is when human-made outdoor lights are brighter than the natural outdoor light level. Light pollution has significant consequences for both humans and animals.
“Light pollution not only harms wildlife by interrupting migration patterns and affecting nocturnal animals, it also has a huge impact on human health and has been linked to increases in breast cancers and other types of cancers,” said junior Brooke Proman, vice president of the Envirothon club.
Excessive outdoor lights can also negatively affect natural plant life systems.
“Some plants are going to flower earlier, and they are going to be more likely to be killed by frost,” said Tom Blackburn, advocacy chair of the Northern Virginia Bird Alliance. “[Light pollution] disrupts the entire ecosystem.”
The presentations linked light pollution to disruption of bird migration patterns.
“Around 80% of our birds migrate at night,” Blackburn said. “With these bright lights, they will fly around and waste all of their energy stopping at the lights in these areas instead of going to their migration routes. Then, they do not have enough energy to keep flying on, which leads to higher levels of mortality. They also might crash into buildings [because] they are attracted to bright lights.”
In addition, increased brightness in skies can alter the normal waking and sleeping times of bird species.
“If there is too much light, the birds will be disturbed [and they will] be waking up too early because the lights are keeping them from sleeping properly,” Blackburn said. “When they are waking up too early and they are stressed, they lose weight and the eggs that they lay are less healthy. Then, the babies are much less likely to survive.”
The event spread awareness of targeted efforts such as ensuring outdoor lights are pointed downwards, eliminating unnecessary lighting and making all light fall in the lowest possible level of brightness to alleviate the problem and encouraged students to take action to protect the environment.
“You can do an inventory of your home and find lights that are on too bright or are outside and are not shielded; maybe those lights are not needed at all,” Blackburn said.
Additionally, speakers shared that lighting colors should be warm, as cool colored lights are more damaging to the environment and can even impact human health.
“Cool white lights are going to be more harmful to you,” Blackburn said. “If you leave those on as you are getting ready for bed it is going to suppress melatonin which is going to make it more difficult for you to get ready to go to sleep.”
The presentation night served as an effective way to unify high school and middle school efforts to help lessen the problem of light pollution and to connect the groups.
“We hope to be inspiring to the future generation,” junior Samhita Som, Secretary of the Envirothon club said. “I know the Envirothon club will be in good hands.”
