[AZ-Observing] Re: [Fwd: Re: Re: Astronomy an unhealthy activity? NO! Light Pollution is Unhealthy!!]

  • From: Roger Ceragioli <rogerc@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
  • To: az-observing@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
  • Date: Tue, 11 Oct 2005 11:50:01 -0700

These are good points, Tom.  And so perhaps the medical effects of 
exposure to light at night could assist in the persuasion?  People 
usually become quite concerned when they hear about cancer. 

At any rate, I was trying to redirect the original thread away from 
worrying about getting sick from doing astronomy at night, to what I 
think is a more important upshot of the sleep research:  exposure of 
million or rather billions of people to unnatural amounts of light at 
night due to increasingly obtrusive and wasteful outdoor lighting.

Cheers,
Roger


Tom Polakis wrote:

>Howard C. Anderson wrote:
>  
>
>>I understand the President wants us all to save energy.  I wonder how 
>>much energy
>>is used in lighting our streets so bright that I cannot tell whether my 
>>headlights are on?
>>
>>How much does it cost?  Does anyone know where they keep the light bill 
>>for Phoenix,
>>Tempe, Scottsdale, Mesa, etc.? 
>>    
>>
>
>
>The 2005-06 budget for the City of Tempe is here:
>
>http://www.tempe.gov/budget/FY%2005-06/06_Line%20Item.pdf
>
>
>On Page 16 of 418(!) are the electric bill numbers.  They show $4.2M, and 
>$900K of that is for street lighting.  The entire City of Tempe budget is 
>$288M.
>
>So lighting represents roughly 20% of the city's electric bill, and 0.3% of 
>the total budget.  You can see why it's a tough sell to pitch a wholesale 
>change in streetlighting using an argument based on budget alone. 
>
>A long time back, Tim Hunter gave a talk about the IDA to EVAC.  When I asked 
>him about the percentage of energy consumption due to lighting, the figure he 
>gave was 10%.
>
>Tom
>
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>  
>

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