To the Editor:

We were in your part of the state recently. We saw that most of the municipal lighting there — like here — has switched to the biggest culprit in exploding global light pollution and excessive skyglow: Light Emitting Diodes, or LEDs.

The multibillion dollar lighting industry has not been upfront about this change. Any artificial light is pollution where nature is concerned, of course, but legacy, incandescent lighting mimics natural light properties and is the safest kind.

LEDs, however, are electronic devices that are highly biologically disruptive, with extreme reach. These devices emit a form of light which is completely foreign to every living thing. Injecting LED lighting into complex ecosystems is an environmental stressor and stress amplifier that our rural, agricultural regions can ill afford.

LEDS are marketed as sustainable, “green,” and energy efficient, yet the lighting industry knows the environment is in LED-caused trouble. Their publications cite research showing a 40 to 60 percent drop in pollinators and a 60 percent loss of the periphyton mass on which aquatic life depends.

They note timing or phenological mismatches, habitat incursions, biodiversity depletion, top-down and bottom-up cascading damage, lower crop yields, and LED adjustments that only end up transferring negative impacts from one species onto another.

Other independent research details color signal confusion in nocturnal insects under LEDs, and how a sweep of bright LED light can stun exquisitely light-attuned creatures like amphibians, or cause irreversible retinal damage for night-active mammals — wildlife or human — even at a distance.

New findings from 2021 sound the alarm about modern light pollution’s destabilizing effect on microbiomes, calling it a severely under-explored area of research. Even newer research documented that, when exposed to typical streetlamp-like lighting at night, entire colonies of desert mice died within days. This is a tiny fraction of published scientific findings from researchers around the world.

LEDs are efficient all right: at hurting wildlife and slicing through essential interconnections in nature. The scope and variety of LED-induced harm makes disintegration of entire ecosystems near inevitable.

The industry knows LED light hurts people, too, either insidiously (various cancers, heart disease, metabolic, mental, and mood disorders, stroke, immunosuppression, virus transmission, poor birth outcomes, shortened life spans, neurodegenerative diseases) or more immediately (eye pain, nausea, epileptic seizures, migraines, distorted vision, lupus flares, dizziness, malaise.)

NYPA [New York Power Authority], NYSERDA [New York State Energy Research and Development Authority] NYS Public Services, and the DOE [Department of Energy] know it, too.

They know that mere harm “reduction” methods like shields and orange-y bulbs can’t necessarily protect anyone — nor vital aspects of nature — and they know the lighting standards that utility companies point to and apply actually don’t account for medically vulnerable members of the public, children, or anybody the standard-setting groups may view as “unique populations.”

The industry knows that, even among healthy young adults, one person’s reaction to light  can be 50 times more pronounced than the next person’s. This year, the International Agency on Research on Cancer put artificial light at night on its high priority evaluation list, citing: “relevant human cancer, animal cancer and mechanistic evidence.”

This October, the International Energy Agency wrote that, according to current product safety standards, LED streetlights may be in “Risk Group 2,” meaning hazardous to look at for more than ¼ of a second, or to be exposed to for over a minute.

Did IEA just figure this out? Will there be a public statement? A safety recall?  Small wonder the phrase “asbestos-scale liability”  is turning up in LED articles lately.

Commercial lighting and energy interests aren’t our health proxies or our doctors, clearly have no concept of “do no harm,” and can’t be left to call the shots on this critical topic. Year-round, population-scale “dosing” with phototoxic, neurodisruptive light may work well for their business model, but forced toxic exposure is illegal for a reason. So is failure to warn.

Luckily, public lighting belongs to the taxpaying public, and utility companies are expected to answer to their customers. And, unlike contamination in water or soil, light-borne poison is a quick and obvious fix: Switch back to the old bulbs. Relief will be immediate.

A town can save money and energy using fewer lamps, timers, or motion detectors. There are even super-efficient incandescent technologies developed by University of Rochester and MIT. It makes no sense to continue using harmful LEDs when proven safer alternatives exist. 

MarieAnn Cherry

Washington County