Wednesday, December 15, 2010

Light Pollution also boosts air pollution

In addition to causing breast cancer, light pollution has now been shown to affect the atmospheric chemistry at night in urban regions, increasing the next day air pollution by up to 5%. Ignoring any deleterious effect on astronomy, why are we being idiots on this? Why can't people aim lights correctly so they don't miss well over 50% of the thing they want to light? Why can't we understand if you want to light something on the ground, you can't do it by sending light up?

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-11990737

http://www.treehugger.com/files/2010/12/urban-light-pollution-boosts-air-pollution.php

2 comments:

Jennifer said...

Because it somehow got turned into a political issue?

Dean W. Armstrong said...

Probably

Here's the abstract: http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2010AGUFM.A21C0117S