The Ecological Consequences of Artificial Light at Night is a book written by Dr. Travis Longcore and Catherine Rich in 2006. As a dark sky advocate, Travis’s writings (https://travislongcore.net) have influenced my thoughts on light pollution and outside lighting for a long time. If you want to know the skinny on light pollution and it’s effect on plants and animals, this book is a primary read. It’s not easy going but very informative. Lighting, like in my picture, will have consequences in the natural world. This was 10pm so it’s all from the high kelvin LED vintage style lighting at the new development, Legacy Park, in Mechanicsburg, PA. For instance, do you know how many photoreceptors plants have, what each one does, and how they inform the plant about its current environmental conditions? I dare you to read the book. See if it changes your perception of light at night as a nuisance to light as a powerful stimuli and incredibly disruptive pollutant in nature.
I decided it was time for a second time around for the Nightlights light pollution blog site. Hopefully, it will serve to raise awareness of the problems and dangers to all life caused by light pollution and over-lighting the night. It's a timing thing. Since everything is connected to everything, and with light being one of the most powerful stimuli on Earth, will we eventually learn to pay closer attention to what we do with our lighting? This is not light as a nuisance issue but light as a biological and ecological arranger and orchestrator.
When I started looking into all things lighting, I found myself understanding through my context of audio engineering.
Today, I listened to a Waves webcast with Andrew Scheps, a famous engineer/producer, who did the engineering on hit songs we all know. One of the take-aways was using mid/side EQ. Piano is always a problem in a mix. Piano, at one time or another, covers ALL the available frequencies. Mixes with heavy piano are really tough. It is difficult to find the perfect level where the piano track is up enough in the mix while not masking the guitars, bass, drums, or even vocals. The solution is to use a mid/side EQ. On a piano track, you would cut the piano’s conflicting frequencies in the middle pan, where bass, kick/snare drums and vocals live, and boost those frequencies on the left/right sides. Now, the piano can be heard at a lower level, doesn’t mask or hide the other instruments, and makes a good mix easier to reach. Everything can be heard and the mix has a beautiful clarity to it.
How does this apply to lighting design? I would suggest that instead of lighting up a whole landscape with brilliant lighting, one can dim lights, use other CCT’s, or even do away with luminaires where they have no real use or purpose, and put focused light on specific targets. Such a strategy would render a better solution, provide clarity for vision, performance, and true safety.
When you brilliantly light everything, a lighting design becomes just like a bad audio mix. When everything is lit the same, contrast is lost, intelligibility is lost. Important details are lost in the blaze of light. Poor lighting design is just like a mix where everything is just too loud and intelligibility is lost. Nothing stands out. It’s just loud and certainly not pleasurable to listen to. Things like pedestrians, road obstacles, crosswalks, dangers should be illuminated at night, maybe even with different CCT lighting to help them stand out. Surrounding those important targets should be lit differently to increase the contrast. Pedestrians, walkways, dangers need to be the focus of illumination, not the side of buildings, landscape and certainly not the sky.
Today’s lighting strategy is to just make everything brighter and brighter, louder and louder, then we’ll be able to see everything and we’ll all be safe. That is so very wrong. Such a strategy certainly doesn’t work in audio production and I don’t believe it works in lighting design either.
Light well and prosper! (Please stay well and safe, everybody)
A noticeable trend in our area is the use of vintage carriage lights as streetlights. These examples can be seen at Legacy Park, in Mechanicsburg, and Sinclair Park, in Monroe Township, on the west side of Mechanicsburg.
An analysis of the illumination pattern, directionality and efficiency of vintage carriage lighting follows. A little bit of research also led into some finds and discussion about proper pedestrian crossing lighting.
What I found was as expected. Literally, 3/4 or more of the light goes out the sides, directed horizontally. Only about 1/4 or less of the light is directed downward. There is some upward cutoff but because of the higher CCT chosen for these lights, a lot of the light is scattered upwards, creating a mini-skyglow dome over the new development that can be seen from blocks away.
A main issue with designing safe pedestrian lighting is the competition with the ambient light level and properly contrasting pedestrians so they can be seen and even highlighted. In this case, about 4 lux was available just outside of the shadow caused by the base of the the light fixture (shown in the picture on the right). Even less light was in an approximate 10′ radius around the light pole. At the same time, about 25 lux, as high as I could reach, was directed horizontally into the new homes, first and second stories, along the street.
In essence, the lighting choice of vintage carriage street lights in this new development disregards pedestrian safety by illuminating everything else at 4 times the level of the pedestrians. Best practice for pedestrian safety is approximately 10 lux above the ambient lighting level. Improper lighting choice by the developers has turned this lighting scheme upside down from what it should be.
In addition, people buying the new homes will be presented with the problem of high CCT street lights, on all night long and illuminating the inside of their homes at night. Per research, 5 lux, is the benchmark level for human circadian disruption. The 25 lux light level into the homes is well above this known threshold where impacts to human health occur.
In the case of Legacy Park, developers have chosen to ignore the recommendations of both the medical professionals and environmentalist in choosing a high CCT light source. I personally have not checked Sinclair Park for spectrum or CCT. While CCT is not a good absolute, 3000K is the maximum CCT that should be used. Read that, 3000K is not the standard, it’s the maximum CCT.
As far as efficiency goes, the carriage lights are LED, but with the misdirected lighting wasting 3/4 of the light and energy, these lights as ‘efficient street lighting’ get the elimination buzzer. Remember, we are all paying the electric bill.
The application of vintage carriage style lights as street lighting is simply the wrong luminaire for the application. Carriage lights as street lights create similar pitfalls and problems as vintage acorn lighting previously discussed in my blog.
I believe, in the first Star Wars, Jedi Obi-Wan Kenobi, told the storm troopers looking for Luke and the droids, These aren’t the lights you want…
Night Lights 