Bring back the stars
Burning fossil fuels spews carbon dioxide into the air. Plastic pollutants infiltrate our oceans. Garbage and sewage contaminate our waterways and land.
These are examples of pollution with which most people are familiar. But light pollution? Unfortunately, it’s just as real. And it majorly impacts our daily lives, although most people remain unaware of its negative effects.
“There’s so many health issues that it’s connected to, not only for humans but for the [other] species out there, too,” said Thomas Berta, a West Ashley resident and a member of the International Dark-Sky Association (IDA).
“It’s already affecting people by messing up their sleep, but there are so many effects it’s tied to.”
Studies have linked this increased abundance of light at night to greater risks of depression, diabetes, breast cancer and more, according to the IDA.
Harsh artificial lights disrupt human’s natural circadian rhythm, the internal clock that tells our bodies when it’s time to wake up and go to sleep. To keep this cycle in check, our bodies produce melatonin, which helps us sleep, boosts our immune systems and regulates some organ function like in the pancreas and ovaries. Too much exposure to artificial light at night can reduce the production of melatonin, causing big health issues.
Having light at night is a necessary part of living. We need street lights for driving and walking. We need lights in and around our homes and commercial buildings for safety. Fortunately, there are ways to reduce the impact of night light.
A city-wide change
“The city has noise ordinances,” said Karl Brady Jr., Charleston city council member in West Ashley, “where construction equipment can’t be operated early in the morning. And, we have a decibel requirement. If you’re having a neighborhood party, the sound can’t be above a certain decibel level, but it occurred to me that there’s nothing really stopping your neighbor from putting a spotlight, like literally a commercial one, in their backyard and shining it on your house.
“Obviously that’s an extreme example, but it got me thinking: What could the city reasonably implement from a light pollution standpoint?”
Brady told the City Paper he began thinking about the issue after talking with Berta about a year ago to learn more about light pollution. Since then, the City of Charleston has agreed to take steps towards reducing artificial light.
“There’s kind of two sides to it,” Brady said. “There’s the streetlight component and then there’s the question of how do we address residential and commercial build-outs.”
The city is working with Dominion Energy on a phased approach to replacing city streetlights with lower intensity bulbs that reduce pollution and save on energy costs. Lights will be replaced in phases to avoid an expensive endeavor upfront. Lower intensity lights will be installed in any new street lights and old lights as they need to be replaced.
“The City of Charleston has more than 6,800 lights eligible for conversion to high-efficiency LEDs,” a spokesman for Dominion Energy said. “Once complete, the LED conversion [in Charleston] can save more than 3.7 million kilowatt hours of energy annually, or enough energy to power nearly 350 homes for a year.”
The city may also install shields atop some streetlights, particularly downtown’s gas lantern lights, to lessen the amount of light thrown up into the sky, Brady said.
Berta said he believes the proposed changes are a start, but he hopes the city will push Dominion to use lights with a color temperature of 2200 Kelvin. These amber-colored lights allow for clear visibility but have less of the white/blue light that disrupts our natural sleep cycle.
Concerns all around
Though streetlights are one source of light pollution, residential and commercial buildings also contribute to the problem.
Brady said the city is considering adding light overlay zones to its zoning code, which would require residents and businesses to use certain intensities of lights based on which zone they are in.
“The idea would be, downtown would be the most intense, suburban would be the next most intense and then as you move out to the edge, you would expect less light. … Everything that currently exists in the built environment would be grandfathered in but as you go through both new construction and substantial redevelopment, the new overlay zone would be in effect.”
The final piece to this puzzle, Brady said, is the question of a light ordinance for residential areas.
Homeowners often unintentionally install outdoor light fixtures that throw bright light into their neighbors’ homes or yards. This can disturb the neighbors’ sleep and be a nuisance much in the way loud noise can be disruptive. A residential ordinance to enhance quality of life could require residents to use light under a certain intensity or restrict putting up an outdoor light within a certain distance from someone else’s property.
“The idea with the light nuisance ordinance would be that you can have whatever you have currently as long as it’s not infringing on someone else’s right to live [undisturbed] in their house,” Brady said.
From a commercial standpoint, many businesses claim bright lights are necessary to deter crime, but IDA says studies have disproved this correlation. A 2000 study called the Chicago Alley Lighting Project found that additional light in alleyways actually increased crimes related to violence and property. Though the study did not find a definitive explanation for the results, other researchers who have conducted similar studies speculate that brighter, more intense lights may actually attract more attention to an area.
The solution, Berta said, isn’t to discard commercial security lighting altogether but to consider how much lighting is installed and the degree of intensity. Lower intensity amber-colored lights can provide a level of protection while preventing high-intensity bright light from disturbing nearby residents.
Protecting nature
Humans are far from the only living beings negatively impacted by light pollution. Most Lowcountry residents are familiar with light’s impact on the local sea turtle population.
Folly Beach, Sullivan’s Island and the Isle Palms implement outdoor lighting ordinances from May to October, directing light away from the beach to protect sea turtles during nesting season.
But in the Lowcountry’s diverse ecosystem, studies show there are many other animals who suffer, including hundreds of bird species.
A 2014 study from peer-reviewed journal Ornithological Applications: The Condor estimated that between 100 million to 1 billion birds die annually in the U.S. from flying into buildings. This is often the result of bright lighting. Nocturnal migratory birds become confused by bright artificial light at night, losing their sense of direction and fatally crashing into buildings and windows.
One of the study’s conclusions was “mortality can be reduced by minimizing light emission at night.”
Starry, starry nights
For Berta, the issue of light pollution holds another importance: the ability to see the stars.
An amateur astronomer, Berta is a member of the Lowcountry Stargazers club, which meets every Wednesday in Brittlebank Park. The meetings are open for anyone to learn more about stargazing.
While Berta’s main concerns with light pollution are the human and animal impacts, he said he hopes the effort to darken the skies will allow him and others to engage with the universe more.
“We try to educate the public on what you can see in the night sky. And here, you can’t see the night sky anymore,” he said.
Drive about 45 miles from the peninsula and you’ll find a place where the stars shine bright — Hampton Plantation State Historic Site in McClellanville.
Demetrios Papadopoulos, a Mount Pleasant resident and another member of the IDA and Lowcountry Stargazers, is working closely with Hampton Plantation’s park manager Jayson Sellers to get the site certified as the first Dark Sky Park in South Carolina.
“All metropolitan areas have polluted the night sky with the lights, so it’s really hard to experience that most beautiful part of nature,” Papadopoulos said.
He went with the Lowcountry Stargazers to the historic site a few years ago recalling, “I was so blown away by the beautiful dark sky up there. No light pollution hardly at all, and I told [Sellers], ‘This sky is amazing. We really need to protect this dark sky, because it’s so beautiful.’ And he was on board with that.”
Designated Dark Sky Parks exist all over the world. Once named, the park or site must meet certain IDA lighting requirements in addition to offering educational programming about dark skies and the dangers of light pollution.
“We just need to get more people aware of it,” said Berta, who hopes to also get Charleston County on board with light changes. “And maybe contact their representatives and say, ‘Hey, let’s look at what else we can do.’ ”
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