How does the glow of city lights impact our environment and health? Discover the surprising answers as we unpack the complexities of light pollution and light poverty in this illuminating episode. Maria Dautant, a Senior Associate at HLB Lighting Design, joins us to share her expert insights on the often-overlooked consequences of artificial lighting on biodiversity and human health. From disrupted sleep patterns to endangered wildlife, we explore why balancing the right amount of light is crucial for both our ecosystem and well-being.
Ever wondered why some neighbourhoods are bathed in light while others languish in darkness? This episode sheds light on the glaring issue of light poverty affecting over a billion people worldwide. Hear about innovative initiatives like the Sea Water Lamp Project and Light Reach Network, which are making strides to provide sustainable lighting solutions in impoverished areas. Maria Dutton offers a compelling look at how inadequate lighting hinders social development and challenges our notions of a basic standard of living.
Lighting is more than just flipping a switch—it's a cornerstone of public safety, health, and community well-being. Explore how cities across the U.S. are rethinking their lighting strategies to reduce light pollution and enhance safety. Learn practical tips for adopting sustainable lighting practices and improving the quality of light in your own community. By the end of this episode, you'll understand why quality lighting is not just an aesthetic choice but a fundamental aspect of modern life. Join us for an episode that promises to enlighten and empower you to see the world in a new light.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Sky glow, glare, light trespass and light clutter
the combination of all of thoseare really the culprits, right,
the ones that are creating thelight pollution.
Sky glow looks a little bitlike this it's a haze that just
lingers above your city and,like I said, it can be visible
up to 200 kilometers away.
It seems to be increasing at ahigher rate than we previously
(00:23):
thought.
Let's talk about glare.
Brighter is not better.
It's not really about thequantity of light.
It's mostly about the qualityof light.
If we have good qualitylighting, we can see better
Light trespass it can happenanywhere.
All it takes is just reallybright or badly aimed light.
Maybe we need to startre-evaluating the lighting
(00:44):
standards of the municipality orthe neighborhood.
Maybe we need to change a fewthings here and there to adjust
the requirements of the lightingso we can mitigate light
pollution.
Speaker 2 (00:59):
Welcome back to the Virtual Lighting Design
Community Podcast, a globalplatform that empowers, inspires
, educates and connects thelighting design community.
This podcast is brought to youby our premium supporters Aero
Hospitality Lighting, creativeLighting Asia, erco, the Signify
Lighting Academy and PhilixLighting.
Today, we have the privilege ofhearing from Maria Dutton, a
(01:22):
Senior Associate at HLB LightingDesign.
With over 15 years ofexperience.
Maria is an award-winningarchitectural lighting designer
who has made a significantimpact in the industry.
She has worked in New York,sydney and Dubai, bringing a
wealth of global experience toher role.
Maria is not only a dedicatedprofessional, but also a
passionate mentor who activelyengages in educational
(01:43):
initiatives to inspire andsupport aspiring lighting
designers.
Today, maria will share herexpertise on the crucial topic
of light pollution versus lightpoverty.
Her talk will delve into thechallenges and solutions
associated with balancingillumination in our environment.
As a thought leader in thefield, maria's insights will
provide valuable perspectives onaddressing these critical
(02:04):
issues.
Without further ado, let's diveinto this enlightening
conversation with Maria Dutton.
Speaker 1 (02:24):
Well, thank you so much to the VLDC for inviting me
to this space and present thisvery interesting topic.
At least it is interesting tome Light pollution versus light
poverty and their effects onsocial development.
And before we get started, Iwant to share an anecdote,
something that happened to mewhen I was about 10 years old.
(02:45):
That was the first time Iremember I ever saw a pristine
dark sky with all of itsmagnificent stars, and it
happened when I was on vacationin an island and suddenly the
power went off, and it turns outthat it went off around 4 pm in
the afternoon.
(03:06):
It came back around 9 pm in theevening, and so, of course, my
brother and I were sittingoutside watching the sunset and
all of these beautiful starsstarting appearing, and I
remember thinking to myself ohmy God, I've never seen so many
stars in my life.
But at the same time, somethinginteresting happened.
(03:26):
When I looked around,everything was pitch dark and I
felt like I couldn't movebecause I would get lost, or I
wouldn't even be able to movearound because there was no
lighting.
So, although I was experiencingsomething in my life that was
beautiful and magnificent, atthe same time I was experiencing
something that was very scaryand that experience stayed in my
(03:52):
mind and I guess it neverreally clicked for me until very
recently, when we startedtalking about light pollution,
how we should mitigate lightpollution, and also how we
started talking aboutpotentially, you know,
considering darkness as anoption, and that's where, to me,
it clicked.
So, as we move forward in thispresentation, I would like you
(04:14):
also to think about somethingthat is written in the
Declaration of Human Rights, orthe Universal Declaration of
Human Rights.
It's Article 25, and it saysthat everyone has the right to a
standard of living, and I wouldlike you all to keep that in
mind as we move on in thispresentation.
So the agenda is very simplewe're going to define what light
(04:39):
pollution is and we're going totalk about its effects.
We then will move on todefining what light poverty is
and also talk about the effectsof light poverty in our world,
and finally, we're going to talkabout the role of lighting in
achieving a standard of living.
So let's get started.
(04:59):
Light pollution is the excessiveor inappropriate use of outdoor
artificial light, andunfortunately, light pollution
is not really generated by onething.
It's a combination of manythings, and we're going to talk
about sky glow.
Glare, light trespass and lightclutter, and the combination of
all of those, are really theculprits, right the ones that
(05:23):
are creating the light pollutionproblem.
Let's start first with what skyglow is.
It is defined as the artificialbrightening of the night sky
due to human created lightscattering in the atmosphere
that returns back to Earth.
The interesting thing about thesky glow is that sky glow can
(05:45):
actually travel up to 200kilometers.
So even if you are in an areathat takes care of its night sky
and uses very good shieldedlighting, you can still be
affected by areas that are about200 kilometers away from you.
And in the screen I have a goodexample.
(06:06):
This is in the United States.
We can see two cities herePhoenix and Flagstaff.
Flagstaff is a city in theUnited States that has very good
guidelines and regulationsabout protecting the night sky,
but, as you can see, the city ofPhoenix the glow that comes out
of it actually affectsFlagstaff.
It travels in a way that endsup lingering above Flagstaff.
(06:31):
So another thing to keep inmind about sky glow is that it
seems to be increasing at ahigher rate than we previously
thought.
It is increasing between 6.5 to10.4% every year in Europe and
North America, and, although ithasn't been fully measured in
developing countries, it isbelieved that in those locations
(06:52):
, the increase in sky glow everyyear may actually be higher
than that.
So sky glow looks a little bitlike this it's a haze that just
lingers above your city and,like I said, it can be visible
up to 200 kilometers away.
And the right side we have thecity of Los Angeles.
(07:12):
On the left side we have thecity of Dubai, where I currently
live, and although the tint ofthe sky glow is very different
because it depends on the typeof lighting that we have in our
cities, it still looks very muchthe same.
Let's talk about glare now.
Glare is defined as theexcessive brightness that can
(07:33):
cause visual discomfort or evendisability.
This image that I'm showinghere on the right I think it's
become very famous and some ofyou may have already seen it,
and for those of you thathaven't, I wonder if you can see
the person that is standing inthis picture, and if you cannot,
(07:53):
then tell me now Can you seethat person now?
So it turns out that if youlook at the previous image
closely, you will find out thatthat person was standing there
all the time, but we couldn'tsee that person because the
light was so bright that it wastaking all of our attention.
The moment that we cover thelight, we are able to focus on
(08:16):
this person, which really comesto show that brighter is not
better, is not really about thequantity of light.
It's mostly about the qualityof light.
If we have good qualitylighting, we can see better.
Now speaking about lighttrespass light trespass is
(08:37):
unwanted light that intrudesonto a property or area where it
is not meant to go, and it canbe caused by very bright
luminaires, unshieldedluminaires or also poorly aimed
luminaires, and it can happenanywhere.
People tend to think that lighttrespass is only a problem of
the city, but it can actuallyhappen in very low populated
(08:59):
areas as well.
All it takes is just a reallybright or badly aimed light.
We can see a few examples onthe screen On the left, we can
see very bright luminaires nextto buildings, and these
luminaires come from streets orfrom fields within the city.
Or in some cases, like in thecase of the image in the middle,
(09:21):
it could be very bright facadeswith poorly aimed luminaires
that end up entering your space,as the example on the right.
This is a picture that I tookin an area that's very close to
where I live, and you can seethat there's a stadium there
Every time there's a game.
Unfortunately, the people thatlive in that building across the
(09:43):
street from the stadium, theyhave to suffer because all of
this light spills out of thestadium and just enters their
space.
And finally, let's define lightclutter.
Light clutter can be defined asbright, confusing and excessive
groupings of light sources, andeven though we are defining
(10:03):
this as light sources, it can beanything that produces
brightness.
We are now seeing more and moreall of these self-illuminating
signs that are locatedeverywhere in cities.
In the image on the left we cansee Tokyo, on the right we can
see New York, and this isbecoming more and more common.
(10:24):
It turns out that all of thesesigns LED screens are becoming a
big part of the live pollutionproblem.
So, because I live in the MiddleEast, I'm focusing on what is
the brightness of cities in theMiddle East.
But here you can see the top 10brightest metropolitan areas
compared to the global urbanaverage.
(10:45):
And yes, on number two we havea Middle Eastern city, riyadh,
but we have cities all aroundthe world here and some of them
can be even 8.1 times brighterthan the global average.
When we look at the brightestcities, these are
non-metropolitan areas.
(11:06):
Right, we can see three citiesin the Middle East that make the
top 10, mecca, kuwait City andMedina.
But there are other citiesaround the world, again, that
are much, much higher than theglobal average, and we can see
in number one is St Petersburgbeing 8.1 times brighter than
the global urban average.
(11:27):
And again, because I findmyself in the Middle East, I
wonder well, how does that lookin a map?
And this is what it is.
Around the Gulf, we could see amassive amount of brightness
coming out of all of thosecities along the coast of the
Gulf, but in the center of SaudiArabia cities along the coast
of the Gulf, but in the centerof Saudi Arabia we find a lot of
brightness.
(11:48):
We can also see it in the RedSea and also around the
Mediterranean, and we can reallytell the shape of the Nile with
all that brightness that comesout of it.
But at the same time, we cansee a lot of areas in this
region that are very much dark,and we're going to talk about
(12:10):
that a little later.
Before we get to that let'stalk about.
What are the effects of lightpollution?
We're going to start talkingabout the effects on
biodiversity, because these arethe ones that we're hearing the
most.
Unfortunately, light pollutioncan disrupt many natural ways in
our biodiversity.
For example, it can reallyaffect the natural behavior of
(12:34):
bugs.
It can disrupt decis seasonalchanges in trees.
In places where we have thefour seasons, for example, the
trees may not shed the leaves atthe time when they need to, and
then they may suffer fromfreezing.
We all know that light pollutionhas very damaging effects on
(12:55):
turtles, so it can disrupt thehatchling navigation.
We all know that turtles tendto go where the light is.
So if there is a very brightenvironment around the beaches
where their eggs hatch, they canbe disoriented and then they'll
never make it to the sea.
We have also seen disruption tomigratory patterns of birds.
(13:18):
Of course, those would be thebirds that migrate at night and
they can get lost anddisoriented and end up in the
wrong place.
There has been observations ofdisruption to predatory patterns
for mammals that hunt at night,and also disruption to roosting
and feeding of bats.
So what happens is that whenthe environment around their
(13:40):
areas it becomes very bright,they believe it's still daytime
outside, so they don't go out tohunt, and it can create a
massive problem for them.
And, of course, the effects oflight pollution on our health.
They're becoming more and morepopular to talk about, or it's
becoming more and more popularto talk about the damage to our
(14:03):
circadian rhythm that we allknow gets affected not only by
bright lights, but also byspecific parts of the spectrum
of lighting, right, and theproblem is that when we start
messing with our circadianrhythm, our body gets completely
disrupted and it can causeproblems like cancer, obesity,
(14:28):
depression, sleep disorders,reproductive health, heart
disease, diabetes and many morehealth, heart disease, diabetes
and many more.
And what's important to mentionhere is that obviously, we're
becoming an unhealthier society,and unhealthy societies cannot
(14:48):
help in the development of ourworld.
Right, and also unhealthysocieties become a burden to our
economy and to our system.
So we need to really fight foran environment that promotes
health, not only for ourselves,but also for our neighborhood,
for our communities, for oursociety in total.
Now that we have gone throughlight pollution, let's talk
(15:09):
about the other extreme.
Let's talk about light poverty.
Now, light poverty is definedas an imbalance of the
availability of electriclighting, and it can go all the
way from having very littlelight or very poor light to
having none at all.
Now the latest data that wehave says that approximately 1.1
(15:32):
billion people around the worldhave no access to electric
lighting.
So think about that number fora moment.
We are 8 million people in theworld.
1.1 billion people representone in eight.
One in eight people around theworld live in light poverty.
(15:58):
Now, access to electric lightingcan be constrained because of
many reasons.
One can be that people live ingeographical areas where it's
very difficult to bring theelectric grid in, or maybe
governments are underfunded toexpand their electrical grid.
Maybe there are areas whereoff-grid options don't exist,
such as solar power lighting,for example, or there can be
(16:19):
social and economic conflicts inthat region that have either
damaged the electrical grid orhave avoided the possibility of
bringing the electrical gridinto that area.
And when we look at a map, wecan clearly see that light
poverty, unfortunately, is moreprevalent in poor countries, and
(16:40):
that makes sense.
After discussing the reasonswhy people may not have access
to electric lighting, we can seethat the African continent is
really one of the worst.
Outside of that area, we canfind a couple of countries that
are suffering quite a lot fromlight poverty, such as Haiti in
the Americas and North Korea inAsia.
(17:02):
And also this map doesn't takeinto account that in certain
regions, even though theelectrical grid is existent, the
degrading conditions of thegrid is actually causing a
situation of light poverty thatmay not be constant, but it may
be happening on a regular basis.
(17:22):
There are a number oforganizations around the world
that are fighting light poverty.
The Sea Water Lamp Project isone that's very interesting.
It's an organization that isaddressing light poverty at the
Wayuu people, which are locatedin the border between Colombia
and Venezuela and South America,and this is what we would call
(17:44):
an approach to address the lightpoverty on a personal level.
So this is a little device thatpeople can carry with them.
It produces light by ionizingseawater, and it doesn't just
produce light, it can alsoproduce electricity to charge
small electronic devices, as wecan see in the image on the left
.
Now there are otherorganizations, like the
(18:07):
Lightreach Network, which I'vebeen working with.
They have a program calledLight for Lebanon.
They have been addressing asituation of light poverty in
Beirut on a more communal orneighborhood level, so their
approach is to bring in solarpower lighting to communities
that have been affected by thedegrading grid or by the
(18:30):
problems that were caused by theexplosion a couple of years ago
, and by doing this they aretrying to enliven spaces and
bring the community a little bitof engagement right and
allowing them to have spaceswhere they can come back, that
they can come back to in theevening and again feel more
(18:53):
alive and feel like they have acommunity again.
As I mentioned when we starteddefining light poverty, some
people think that light povertyis just a lack of lighting
altogether, but I like to callthese situations where light is
brought into neighborhood forsafety reasons or because there
is a lack of properinfrastructure.
(19:14):
I would like to call thatpoverty as well.
Some people call it inequality,but I personally don't like
that, because when we search forequality, if we're not careful,
we may all actually end upbeing equally bad.
When we talk about poverty, itimmediately clicks it's
something that is bad and weneed to fix it.
(19:37):
In these examples, as you cansee, lighting is brought in
without thinking about itsconsequences.
So, on top of creating asituation of not necessarily
safety and uncomfortableenvironments, it can also create
pollution environments.
(19:58):
It can also create pollution,and the problem with this is
that, unfortunately, the qualityof lighting that we get in our
environment also depends on oursocial status, and poor areas
end up getting bad qualitylighting that, at the end, can
create really difficultsituations for them.
It can create sleep disorders,it can still create depression,
it can create stress becauseit's not an appropriate lighting
(20:21):
condition for people to movearound, feeling safe and wanted
to be outside right.
So it creates this situationwhere the environment is not
adequate to promote a safecommunity and a safe
neighborhood.
So let's go back to theUniversal Declaration of Human
(20:42):
Rights for a moment, and thistime let's read the article in
full.
The article reads everyone hasthe right to a standard of
living adequate for the healthand well-being of himself and of
his family, including food,clothing, housing and medical
care, and necessary socialservices, and the right to
security in the event ofunemployment, sickness,
(21:04):
disability, widowhood, old ageor other lack of livelihood in
circumstances beyond his control.
And, as you can see, lightingis not mentioned here at all.
There is no mention of lightingbeing part of a standard of
living.
But after we have seeneverything that I've shown you,
I'm pretty sure that we can allagree that lighting would play a
(21:27):
role in achieving a standard ofliving.
So let's talk about that for amoment.
Let's talk about how doeslighting play a role in
achieving a standard of living?
And the main thing is thatlighting can be an element in
the community that can create asituation of safety or a
(21:50):
sensation of safety.
It can enliven communities andit can also be the promoter of
health, as we have seen in theprevious slides.
So, absolutely, we need tostart thinking about lighting as
an element that can help usensuring a standard of living.
However, in order to do that,we need to make sure that we
(22:13):
fight two evils at the same time, which is, we need to make sure
that we fight two evils at thesame time, which is, we need to
make sure that the lighting thatwe bring into our communities
will be such that will reducelight pollution or will avoid
light pollution, and, on theother hand, we need to make sure
that we are promoting access toadequate lighting at all levels
(22:33):
of our society, becauseachieving a standard of living
is not just for certain people,it should be for all of us.
Now, how can we do that?
Where do we start?
Well, when we are promotinglighting in our communities, we
first of all need to understandwhere we are.
Where is our community in termsof lighting quality?
(22:55):
Are we a very pollutedenvironment or are we a very
pristine and clean environment?
And the way to measure that iswith the scale that you see on
the screen, which is called theportal scale.
The zero means that our city orour environment is very much
polluted and we cannot see anystars at all.
(23:16):
The seven is the representationof an excellent dark side where
we can see all of the stars.
So first of all, we need todefine where are we?
What do we need to do?
Do we need to mitigate or do weneed to preserve?
And once that is defined, thenwe need to move on to regulation
(23:37):
.
We need to make sure that allour cities, all our
neighborhoods, all ourcommunities have guidelines and
regulations that will mandatehow lighting is incorporated
into the environment, thepristine dark skies, if we are
building in an area where wehave complete and full access to
(24:00):
the natural dark sky.
Or we need to make sure thatthe regulation will enforce
behavioral changes to mitigatelight pollution and diminish it.
And we can do this byincorporating into our
regulation, the necessity tomeet sustainability
certifications or the use ofmandatory controls.
(24:20):
You know, in some cases curfewscould be useful.
It doesn't mean that we cannotilluminate the facades of our
buildings, but it means thatmaybe after hours is not
necessary because nobody isseeing them.
In existing cities where wealready have regulations, maybe
we need to start re-evaluatingthe lighting standards of the
municipality or the neighborhood.
(24:42):
Maybe we need to change a fewthings here and there to adjust
the requirements of the lightingso we can mitigate the light
pollution.
And finally, following the DarkSky Model lighting ordinance or
the new recommendations fromDark Sky International is also a
very good way in which we canensure that our guidelines and
(25:06):
our regulation for lighting willmeet the proper requirements to
maintain a healthy nighttimeenvironment.
And to bring this presentationto an end, I want to show you
two examples again in the UnitedStates, where you will see that
it is possible to mitigatelight pollution and also to
(25:27):
preserve the quality of ournight sky.
When the city decided to changetheir street lighting to LED,
they looked at three differentelements that would really help
them improve their situation.
First of all, they looked atchanging the color temperature
(25:48):
to 3000K and they also set thestreet lighting to 90% until
midnight and 60% intensity untilsunrise.
So the outcome of this measurewas that, on top of the fact
that they were able to save over$2 million in energy, they also
(26:10):
noticed that the life of theluminaires was extended.
The total lumens of the systemwere reduced by 63%, the blue
spectrum was reduced by 34%, andwe didn't talk about the blue
spectrum in this presentation,but many of you probably know
that blue spectrum lighting canbe very damaging to our
(26:31):
circadian rhythm.
So it's very good that Tucsonwas able to reduce the blue
spectrum of the street lighting.
And finally, overall, theynoticed a reduction in total
light emissions from the city by7%.
So they actually were able toreduce light pollution by going
(26:52):
with LEDs.
Now, the example of Flagstaff isan interesting one because
Flagstaff, as I mentioned before, has very strict dark sky
guidelines.
They are the first dark skylighting ordinance in the world,
which was adopted in 1958.
They were the first one tointroduce it in the world and
(27:15):
when they decided to go intoLEDs, they took this program
very seriously.
In fact, they created their ownprogram called Street Lighting
for Enhancing Dark Skies, alsoknown as SLED.
It started in 2012, and it tookmany years before they actually
made the switch to LED.
They evaluated two LEDtechnologies.
(27:35):
The ones that are mentionedhere are NBA narrow beam amber
and PCA phosphor converted amber, and the keyword here is amber.
They really wanted to go with avery warm color temperature to
make sure that the streetlighting would not damage the
environment around them and,after a lot of consideration,
(27:56):
once they made the switch, whatthey found out is that they had
no increase in CD sky glow.
I've heard many times thatclients are afraid to go into
LEDs because LEDs are brighterand they have more blue, but the
fact of the matter is that LEDsare very flexible and so, as
long as we are able to regulatewhat we need and what we want
(28:21):
from LEDs, we will be able toboth reduce light emissions or
maintain our pristine night sky.
So, in conclusion, the more weare seeing light pollution
increase, people are gettingmore and more concerned.
Right and there has been thisdiscussion or this discussion
(28:42):
has started very recently thatmaybe we should think about
going back to darkness, but inreality, darkness is not good
for our social development, andnor is light pollution.
However, it is very easy topromote darkness when we have
the privilege to turn our lightsoff, so we need to come to an
agreement that it is all aboutbalance.
(29:04):
We have seen that it ispossible to introduce lighting
into our environment withoutnecessarily creating damaging
outcomes, both in ourenvironment and ourselves, and
we need to admit that it isbecause of electric lighting
that we have been able to comethis far in our development as a
society.
(29:24):
So we cannot just blame lightingfor everything that's happening
.
We just need to understand thatlighting is just a tool and we
need to use it right.
It is about quality and notquantity.
In the Middle East, we reallyhave a unique opportunity
because we are creating citiesfrom the ground up.
We really have the opportunityhere to ensure that all the
(29:48):
development aligns with dark skygoals while still providing
high-quality lighting for propersocial development.
But in existing cities it'salso possible, and we need to
make sure that we promoteregulation that will either
fight light pollution before ithappens or that it will help us
mitigate light pollution, but atthe same time, it has to be a
(30:10):
regulation and a guidelineexcuse me that will promote the
use of proper and adequatelighting at all levels of
society, because this is theonly way that we will be able to
aspire to achieving a standardof living for everyone.
So thank you everybody, andthank you again for the virtual
lighting design community forinviting me to this space and,
(30:33):
of course, if you have anyquestions, just send them my way
.
Speaker 2 (30:38):
We hope you enjoyed this episode and you've gained
some insight or inspiration thatyou can take away or perhaps
apply.
If you enjoyed this episode, itis always appreciated if you
could take a moment to share thepodcast with your peers and
friends or leave a review onyour favorite podcast app.
Consider subscribing to thepodcast and our YouTube channel
to stay up to date with ourlatest content.
(30:59):
Do check out our onlineplatform as well at vldcommunity
.
If you would like more, why notgo back and listen to some of
our previous episodes and hearmore from our thought leaders?
Thanks for listening and wewill be back with more great
presentations or interviews verysoon.
Till next time.
Sky glow, glare, light trespass and light clutter
the combination of all of thoseare really the culprits, right,
the ones that are creating thelight pollution.
Sky glow looks a little bitlike this it's a haze that just
lingers above your city and,like I said, it can be visible
up to 200 kilometers away.
It seems to be increasing at ahigher rate than we previously
(00:23):
thought.
Let's talk about glare.
Brighter is not better.
It's not really about thequantity of light.
It's mostly about the qualityof light.
If we have good qualitylighting, we can see better
Light trespass it can happenanywhere.
All it takes is just reallybright or badly aimed light.
Maybe we need to startre-evaluating the lighting
(00:44):
standards of the municipality orthe neighborhood.
Maybe we need to change a fewthings here and there to adjust
the requirements of the lightingso we can mitigate light
pollution.
Speaker 2 (00:59):
Welcome back to the Virtual Lighting Design
Community Podcast, a globalplatform that empowers, inspires
, educates and connects thelighting design community.
This podcast is brought to youby our premium supporters Aero
Hospitality Lighting, creativeLighting Asia, erco, the Signify
Lighting Academy and PhilixLighting.
Today, we have the privilege ofhearing from Maria Dutton, a
(01:22):
Senior Associate at HLB LightingDesign.
With over 15 years ofexperience.
Maria is an award-winningarchitectural lighting designer
who has made a significantimpact in the industry.
She has worked in New York,sydney and Dubai, bringing a
wealth of global experience toher role.
Maria is not only a dedicatedprofessional, but also a
passionate mentor who activelyengages in educational
(01:43):
initiatives to inspire andsupport aspiring lighting
designers.
Today, maria will share herexpertise on the crucial topic
of light pollution versus lightpoverty.
Her talk will delve into thechallenges and solutions
associated with balancingillumination in our environment.
As a thought leader in thefield, maria's insights will
provide valuable perspectives onaddressing these critical
(02:04):
issues.
Without further ado, let's diveinto this enlightening
conversation with Maria Dutton.
Speaker 1 (02:24):
Well, thank you so much to the VLDC for inviting me
to this space and present thisvery interesting topic.
At least it is interesting tome Light pollution versus light
poverty and their effects onsocial development.
And before we get started, Iwant to share an anecdote,
something that happened to mewhen I was about 10 years old.
(02:45):
That was the first time Iremember I ever saw a pristine
dark sky with all of itsmagnificent stars, and it
happened when I was on vacationin an island and suddenly the
power went off, and it turns outthat it went off around 4 pm in
the afternoon.
(03:06):
It came back around 9 pm in theevening, and so, of course, my
brother and I were sittingoutside watching the sunset and
all of these beautiful starsstarting appearing, and I
remember thinking to myself ohmy God, I've never seen so many
stars in my life.
But at the same time, somethinginteresting happened.
(03:26):
When I looked around,everything was pitch dark and I
felt like I couldn't movebecause I would get lost, or I
wouldn't even be able to movearound because there was no
lighting.
So, although I was experiencingsomething in my life that was
beautiful and magnificent, atthe same time I was experiencing
something that was very scaryand that experience stayed in my
(03:52):
mind and I guess it neverreally clicked for me until very
recently, when we startedtalking about light pollution,
how we should mitigate lightpollution, and also how we
started talking aboutpotentially, you know,
considering darkness as anoption, and that's where, to me,
it clicked.
So, as we move forward in thispresentation, I would like you
(04:14):
also to think about somethingthat is written in the
Declaration of Human Rights, orthe Universal Declaration of
Human Rights.
It's Article 25, and it saysthat everyone has the right to a
standard of living, and I wouldlike you all to keep that in
mind as we move on in thispresentation.
So the agenda is very simplewe're going to define what light
(04:39):
pollution is and we're going totalk about its effects.
We then will move on todefining what light poverty is
and also talk about the effectsof light poverty in our world,
and finally, we're going to talkabout the role of lighting in
achieving a standard of living.
So let's get started.
(04:59):
Light pollution is the excessiveor inappropriate use of outdoor
artificial light, andunfortunately, light pollution
is not really generated by onething.
It's a combination of manythings, and we're going to talk
about sky glow.
Glare, light trespass and lightclutter, and the combination of
all of those, are really theculprits, right the ones that
(05:23):
are creating the light pollutionproblem.
Let's start first with what skyglow is.
It is defined as the artificialbrightening of the night sky
due to human created lightscattering in the atmosphere
that returns back to Earth.
The interesting thing about thesky glow is that sky glow can
(05:45):
actually travel up to 200kilometers.
So even if you are in an areathat takes care of its night sky
and uses very good shieldedlighting, you can still be
affected by areas that are about200 kilometers away from you.
And in the screen I have a goodexample.
(06:06):
This is in the United States.
We can see two cities herePhoenix and Flagstaff.
Flagstaff is a city in theUnited States that has very good
guidelines and regulationsabout protecting the night sky,
but, as you can see, the city ofPhoenix the glow that comes out
of it actually affectsFlagstaff.
It travels in a way that endsup lingering above Flagstaff.
(06:31):
So another thing to keep inmind about sky glow is that it
seems to be increasing at ahigher rate than we previously
thought.
It is increasing between 6.5 to10.4% every year in Europe and
North America, and, although ithasn't been fully measured in
developing countries, it isbelieved that in those locations
(06:52):
, the increase in sky glow everyyear may actually be higher
than that.
So sky glow looks a little bitlike this it's a haze that just
lingers above your city and,like I said, it can be visible
up to 200 kilometers away.
And the right side we have thecity of Los Angeles.
(07:12):
On the left side we have thecity of Dubai, where I currently
live, and although the tint ofthe sky glow is very different
because it depends on the typeof lighting that we have in our
cities, it still looks very muchthe same.
Let's talk about glare now.
Glare is defined as theexcessive brightness that can
(07:33):
cause visual discomfort or evendisability.
This image that I'm showinghere on the right I think it's
become very famous and some ofyou may have already seen it,
and for those of you thathaven't, I wonder if you can see
the person that is standing inthis picture, and if you cannot,
(07:53):
then tell me now Can you seethat person now?
So it turns out that if youlook at the previous image
closely, you will find out thatthat person was standing there
all the time, but we couldn'tsee that person because the
light was so bright that it wastaking all of our attention.
The moment that we cover thelight, we are able to focus on
(08:16):
this person, which really comesto show that brighter is not
better, is not really about thequantity of light.
It's mostly about the qualityof light.
If we have good qualitylighting, we can see better.
Now speaking about lighttrespass light trespass is
(08:37):
unwanted light that intrudesonto a property or area where it
is not meant to go, and it canbe caused by very bright
luminaires, unshieldedluminaires or also poorly aimed
luminaires, and it can happenanywhere.
People tend to think that lighttrespass is only a problem of
the city, but it can actuallyhappen in very low populated
(08:59):
areas as well.
All it takes is just a reallybright or badly aimed light.
We can see a few examples onthe screen On the left, we can
see very bright luminaires nextto buildings, and these
luminaires come from streets orfrom fields within the city.
Or in some cases, like in thecase of the image in the middle,
(09:21):
it could be very bright facadeswith poorly aimed luminaires
that end up entering your space,as the example on the right.
This is a picture that I tookin an area that's very close to
where I live, and you can seethat there's a stadium there
Every time there's a game.
Unfortunately, the people thatlive in that building across the
(09:43):
street from the stadium, theyhave to suffer because all of
this light spills out of thestadium and just enters their
space.
And finally, let's define lightclutter.
Light clutter can be defined asbright, confusing and excessive
groupings of light sources, andeven though we are defining
(10:03):
this as light sources, it can beanything that produces
brightness.
We are now seeing more and moreall of these self-illuminating
signs that are locatedeverywhere in cities.
In the image on the left we cansee Tokyo, on the right we can
see New York, and this isbecoming more and more common.
(10:24):
It turns out that all of thesesigns LED screens are becoming a
big part of the live pollutionproblem.
So, because I live in the MiddleEast, I'm focusing on what is
the brightness of cities in theMiddle East.
But here you can see the top 10brightest metropolitan areas
compared to the global urbanaverage.
(10:45):
And yes, on number two we havea Middle Eastern city, riyadh,
but we have cities all aroundthe world here and some of them
can be even 8.1 times brighterthan the global average.
When we look at the brightestcities, these are
non-metropolitan areas.
(11:06):
Right, we can see three citiesin the Middle East that make the
top 10, mecca, kuwait City andMedina.
But there are other citiesaround the world, again, that
are much, much higher than theglobal average, and we can see
in number one is St Petersburgbeing 8.1 times brighter than
the global urban average.
(11:27):
And again, because I findmyself in the Middle East, I
wonder well, how does that lookin a map?
And this is what it is.
Around the Gulf, we could see amassive amount of brightness
coming out of all of thosecities along the coast of the
Gulf, but in the center of SaudiArabia cities along the coast
of the Gulf, but in the centerof Saudi Arabia we find a lot of
brightness.
(11:48):
We can also see it in the RedSea and also around the
Mediterranean, and we can reallytell the shape of the Nile with
all that brightness that comesout of it.
But at the same time, we cansee a lot of areas in this
region that are very much dark,and we're going to talk about
(12:10):
that a little later.
Before we get to that let'stalk about.
What are the effects of lightpollution?
We're going to start talkingabout the effects on
biodiversity, because these arethe ones that we're hearing the
most.
Unfortunately, light pollutioncan disrupt many natural ways in
our biodiversity.
For example, it can reallyaffect the natural behavior of
(12:34):
bugs.
It can disrupt decis seasonalchanges in trees.
In places where we have thefour seasons, for example, the
trees may not shed the leaves atthe time when they need to, and
then they may suffer fromfreezing.
We all know that light pollutionhas very damaging effects on
(12:55):
turtles, so it can disrupt thehatchling navigation.
We all know that turtles tendto go where the light is.
So if there is a very brightenvironment around the beaches
where their eggs hatch, they canbe disoriented and then they'll
never make it to the sea.
We have also seen disruption tomigratory patterns of birds.
(13:18):
Of course, those would be thebirds that migrate at night and
they can get lost anddisoriented and end up in the
wrong place.
There has been observations ofdisruption to predatory patterns
for mammals that hunt at night,and also disruption to roosting
and feeding of bats.
So what happens is that whenthe environment around their
(13:40):
areas it becomes very bright,they believe it's still daytime
outside, so they don't go out tohunt, and it can create a
massive problem for them.
And, of course, the effects oflight pollution on our health.
They're becoming more and morepopular to talk about, or it's
becoming more and more popularto talk about the damage to our
(14:03):
circadian rhythm that we allknow gets affected not only by
bright lights, but also byspecific parts of the spectrum
of lighting, right, and theproblem is that when we start
messing with our circadianrhythm, our body gets completely
disrupted and it can causeproblems like cancer, obesity,
(14:28):
depression, sleep disorders,reproductive health, heart
disease, diabetes and many morehealth, heart disease, diabetes
and many more.
And what's important to mentionhere is that obviously, we're
becoming an unhealthier society,and unhealthy societies cannot
(14:48):
help in the development of ourworld.
Right, and also unhealthysocieties become a burden to our
economy and to our system.
So we need to really fight foran environment that promotes
health, not only for ourselves,but also for our neighborhood,
for our communities, for oursociety in total.
Now that we have gone throughlight pollution, let's talk
(15:09):
about the other extreme.
Let's talk about light poverty.
Now, light poverty is definedas an imbalance of the
availability of electriclighting, and it can go all the
way from having very littlelight or very poor light to
having none at all.
Now the latest data that wehave says that approximately 1.1
(15:32):
billion people around the worldhave no access to electric
lighting.
So think about that number fora moment.
We are 8 million people in theworld.
1.1 billion people representone in eight.
One in eight people around theworld live in light poverty.
(15:58):
Now, access to electric lightingcan be constrained because of
many reasons.
One can be that people live ingeographical areas where it's
very difficult to bring theelectric grid in, or maybe
governments are underfunded toexpand their electrical grid.
Maybe there are areas whereoff-grid options don't exist,
such as solar power lighting,for example, or there can be
(16:19):
social and economic conflicts inthat region that have either
damaged the electrical grid orhave avoided the possibility of
bringing the electrical gridinto that area.
And when we look at a map, wecan clearly see that light
poverty, unfortunately, is moreprevalent in poor countries, and
(16:40):
that makes sense.
After discussing the reasonswhy people may not have access
to electric lighting, we can seethat the African continent is
really one of the worst.
Outside of that area, we canfind a couple of countries that
are suffering quite a lot fromlight poverty, such as Haiti in
the Americas and North Korea inAsia.
(17:02):
And also this map doesn't takeinto account that in certain
regions, even though theelectrical grid is existent, the
degrading conditions of thegrid is actually causing a
situation of light poverty thatmay not be constant, but it may
be happening on a regular basis.
(17:22):
There are a number oforganizations around the world
that are fighting light poverty.
The Sea Water Lamp Project isone that's very interesting.
It's an organization that isaddressing light poverty at the
Wayuu people, which are locatedin the border between Colombia
and Venezuela and South America,and this is what we would call
(17:44):
an approach to address the lightpoverty on a personal level.
So this is a little device thatpeople can carry with them.
It produces light by ionizingseawater, and it doesn't just
produce light, it can alsoproduce electricity to charge
small electronic devices, as wecan see in the image on the left
.
Now there are otherorganizations, like the
(18:07):
Lightreach Network, which I'vebeen working with.
They have a program calledLight for Lebanon.
They have been addressing asituation of light poverty in
Beirut on a more communal orneighborhood level, so their
approach is to bring in solarpower lighting to communities
that have been affected by thedegrading grid or by the
(18:30):
problems that were caused by theexplosion a couple of years ago
, and by doing this they aretrying to enliven spaces and
bring the community a little bitof engagement right and
allowing them to have spaceswhere they can come back, that
they can come back to in theevening and again feel more
(18:53):
alive and feel like they have acommunity again.
As I mentioned when we starteddefining light poverty, some
people think that light povertyis just a lack of lighting
altogether, but I like to callthese situations where light is
brought into neighborhood forsafety reasons or because there
is a lack of properinfrastructure.
(19:14):
I would like to call thatpoverty as well.
Some people call it inequality,but I personally don't like
that, because when we search forequality, if we're not careful,
we may all actually end upbeing equally bad.
When we talk about poverty, itimmediately clicks it's
something that is bad and weneed to fix it.
(19:37):
In these examples, as you cansee, lighting is brought in
without thinking about itsconsequences.
So, on top of creating asituation of not necessarily
safety and uncomfortableenvironments, it can also create
pollution environments.
(19:58):
It can also create pollution,and the problem with this is
that, unfortunately, the qualityof lighting that we get in our
environment also depends on oursocial status, and poor areas
end up getting bad qualitylighting that, at the end, can
create really difficultsituations for them.
It can create sleep disorders,it can still create depression,
it can create stress becauseit's not an appropriate lighting
(20:21):
condition for people to movearound, feeling safe and wanted
to be outside right.
So it creates this situationwhere the environment is not
adequate to promote a safecommunity and a safe
neighborhood.
So let's go back to theUniversal Declaration of Human
(20:42):
Rights for a moment, and thistime let's read the article in
full.
The article reads everyone hasthe right to a standard of
living adequate for the healthand well-being of himself and of
his family, including food,clothing, housing and medical
care, and necessary socialservices, and the right to
security in the event ofunemployment, sickness,
(21:04):
disability, widowhood, old ageor other lack of livelihood in
circumstances beyond his control.
And, as you can see, lightingis not mentioned here at all.
There is no mention of lightingbeing part of a standard of
living.
But after we have seeneverything that I've shown you,
I'm pretty sure that we can allagree that lighting would play a
(21:27):
role in achieving a standard ofliving.
So let's talk about that for amoment.
Let's talk about how doeslighting play a role in
achieving a standard of living?
And the main thing is thatlighting can be an element in
the community that can create asituation of safety or a
(21:50):
sensation of safety.
It can enliven communities andit can also be the promoter of
health, as we have seen in theprevious slides.
So, absolutely, we need tostart thinking about lighting as
an element that can help usensuring a standard of living.
However, in order to do that,we need to make sure that we
(22:13):
fight two evils at the same time, which is, we need to make sure
that we fight two evils at thesame time, which is, we need to
make sure that the lighting thatwe bring into our communities
will be such that will reducelight pollution or will avoid
light pollution, and, on theother hand, we need to make sure
that we are promoting access toadequate lighting at all levels
(22:33):
of our society, becauseachieving a standard of living
is not just for certain people,it should be for all of us.
Now, how can we do that?
Where do we start?
Well, when we are promotinglighting in our communities, we
first of all need to understandwhere we are.
Where is our community in termsof lighting quality?
(22:55):
Are we a very pollutedenvironment or are we a very
pristine and clean environment?
And the way to measure that iswith the scale that you see on
the screen, which is called theportal scale.
The zero means that our city orour environment is very much
polluted and we cannot see anystars at all.
(23:16):
The seven is the representationof an excellent dark side where
we can see all of the stars.
So first of all, we need todefine where are we?
What do we need to do?
Do we need to mitigate or do weneed to preserve?
And once that is defined, thenwe need to move on to regulation
(23:37):
.
We need to make sure that allour cities, all our
neighborhoods, all ourcommunities have guidelines and
regulations that will mandatehow lighting is incorporated
into the environment, thepristine dark skies, if we are
building in an area where wehave complete and full access to
(24:00):
the natural dark sky.
Or we need to make sure thatthe regulation will enforce
behavioral changes to mitigatelight pollution and diminish it.
And we can do this byincorporating into our
regulation, the necessity tomeet sustainability
certifications or the use ofmandatory controls.
(24:20):
You know, in some cases curfewscould be useful.
It doesn't mean that we cannotilluminate the facades of our
buildings, but it means thatmaybe after hours is not
necessary because nobody isseeing them.
In existing cities where wealready have regulations, maybe
we need to start re-evaluatingthe lighting standards of the
municipality or the neighborhood.
(24:42):
Maybe we need to change a fewthings here and there to adjust
the requirements of the lightingso we can mitigate the light
pollution.
And finally, following the DarkSky Model lighting ordinance or
the new recommendations fromDark Sky International is also a
very good way in which we canensure that our guidelines and
(25:06):
our regulation for lighting willmeet the proper requirements to
maintain a healthy nighttimeenvironment.
And to bring this presentationto an end, I want to show you
two examples again in the UnitedStates, where you will see that
it is possible to mitigatelight pollution and also to
(25:27):
preserve the quality of ournight sky.
When the city decided to changetheir street lighting to LED,
they looked at three differentelements that would really help
them improve their situation.
First of all, they looked atchanging the color temperature
(25:48):
to 3000K and they also set thestreet lighting to 90% until
midnight and 60% intensity untilsunrise.
So the outcome of this measurewas that, on top of the fact
that they were able to save over$2 million in energy, they also
(26:10):
noticed that the life of theluminaires was extended.
The total lumens of the systemwere reduced by 63%, the blue
spectrum was reduced by 34%, andwe didn't talk about the blue
spectrum in this presentation,but many of you probably know
that blue spectrum lighting canbe very damaging to our
(26:31):
circadian rhythm.
So it's very good that Tucsonwas able to reduce the blue
spectrum of the street lighting.
And finally, overall, theynoticed a reduction in total
light emissions from the city by7%.
So they actually were able toreduce light pollution by going
(26:52):
with LEDs.
Now, the example of Flagstaff isan interesting one because
Flagstaff, as I mentioned before, has very strict dark sky
guidelines.
They are the first dark skylighting ordinance in the world,
which was adopted in 1958.
They were the first one tointroduce it in the world and
(27:15):
when they decided to go intoLEDs, they took this program
very seriously.
In fact, they created their ownprogram called Street Lighting
for Enhancing Dark Skies, alsoknown as SLED.
It started in 2012, and it tookmany years before they actually
made the switch to LED.
They evaluated two LEDtechnologies.
(27:35):
The ones that are mentionedhere are NBA narrow beam amber
and PCA phosphor converted amber, and the keyword here is amber.
They really wanted to go with avery warm color temperature to
make sure that the streetlighting would not damage the
environment around them and,after a lot of consideration,
(27:56):
once they made the switch, whatthey found out is that they had
no increase in CD sky glow.
I've heard many times thatclients are afraid to go into
LEDs because LEDs are brighterand they have more blue, but the
fact of the matter is that LEDsare very flexible and so, as
long as we are able to regulatewhat we need and what we want
(28:21):
from LEDs, we will be able toboth reduce light emissions or
maintain our pristine night sky.
So, in conclusion, the more weare seeing light pollution
increase, people are gettingmore and more concerned.
Right and there has been thisdiscussion or this discussion
(28:42):
has started very recently thatmaybe we should think about
going back to darkness, but inreality, darkness is not good
for our social development, andnor is light pollution.
However, it is very easy topromote darkness when we have
the privilege to turn our lightsoff, so we need to come to an
agreement that it is all aboutbalance.
(29:04):
We have seen that it ispossible to introduce lighting
into our environment withoutnecessarily creating damaging
outcomes, both in ourenvironment and ourselves, and
we need to admit that it isbecause of electric lighting
that we have been able to comethis far in our development as a
society.
(29:24):
So we cannot just blame lightingfor everything that's happening
.
We just need to understand thatlighting is just a tool and we
need to use it right.
It is about quality and notquantity.
In the Middle East, we reallyhave a unique opportunity
because we are creating citiesfrom the ground up.
We really have the opportunityhere to ensure that all the
(29:48):
development aligns with dark skygoals while still providing
high-quality lighting for propersocial development.
But in existing cities it'salso possible, and we need to
make sure that we promoteregulation that will either
fight light pollution before ithappens or that it will help us
mitigate light pollution, but atthe same time, it has to be a
(30:10):
regulation and a guidelineexcuse me that will promote the
use of proper and adequatelighting at all levels of
society, because this is theonly way that we will be able to
aspire to achieving a standardof living for everyone.
So thank you everybody, andthank you again for the virtual
lighting design community forinviting me to this space and,
(30:33):
of course, if you have anyquestions, just send them my way
.
Speaker 2 (30:38):
We hope you enjoyed this episode and you've gained
some insight or inspiration thatyou can take away or perhaps
apply.
If you enjoyed this episode, itis always appreciated if you
could take a moment to share thepodcast with your peers and
friends or leave a review onyour favorite podcast app.
Consider subscribing to thepodcast and our YouTube channel
to stay up to date with ourlatest content.
(30:59):
Do check out our onlineplatform as well at vldcommunity
.
If you would like more, why notgo back and listen to some of
our previous episodes and hearmore from our thought leaders?
Thanks for listening and wewill be back with more great
presentations or interviews verysoon.
Till next time.
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