Lighting and Health

Lighting and health have a strong correlation and multiple research studies have been conducted to explain the relationship between the two. In my preparation in becoming a designer until this point I was never aware that first of all light is an extremely important aspect of design, and secondly that the decisions that designers make about lighting can effect the health of the people inhabiting the spaces.

Instinctively we know that light at night can effect our sleeping patterns but the major health risks also involved is something that I find useful and very informative when it comes to designing spaces. Having a light on at night is going to prevent us from having an efficient amount of sleep for our body to function properly. Personally I know how having the lights on or off affects me. I am more likely to fall asleep in class if a teacher is to turn the lights off to show a movie. Also a saying that we have all heard growing up and that I remember my dad telling me is that watching television in the dark is bad for your eyes. Another assumption that we all have is that we must have enough lights to complete the tasks that we are working on, but in truth most of us have too many lights on and it is more healthy to have fewer lights or just the right amount of daylight.

The most astonishing fact from the article Influence of Architectural Lighting on Health, by Eve Edelstein, and from the article Lights at Night Are Linked to Breast Cancer, by Rick Weiss, is the connection of lights at night and breast cancer, as stated in the second title. This is a fact that not everyone knows about but is one that the people deserve to be informed about. Also as the designer it is our job in the future to find a solution that fixes this problem. It is stated in the articles that people who are exposed to too much light during the nighttime hours are more likely to be diagnosed with breast cancer. An experiment was completed and concluded that locations with higher amounts of light at night are thirty-seven percent more likely to have a higher cancer rate than locations with the lowest amount of light at night. Currently these lighting situations are only partial in the production of breast cancer, not any other form of cancer. When I first read this information I started wondering if these locations with higher amounts of light would be large cities and if smaller towns would fall under the category of the lowest amount of light at night. Does this mean that since I am from a small town hidden in the valley of the Blue Ridge Mountains that I have a less likely change of having breast cancer? Has living in Greensboro upped my chances of receiving cancer? Do smaller towns hidden in the mountains have an advantage over the small towns out west?

In Rick Weiss’ article he states that there is a hormone called melatonin that our brain forms to prevent tumors from forming. This hormone is produce mostly at night and so the presence of light causes the levels to drop drastically eventually causing the body to develop cancer. A discovery that has been made states that the energy efficient fluorescent bulbs that energy professionals recently informed people to gradually start switching to has been confirmed as a light that hinders the melatonin hormone from forming. In fact the incandescent bulbs that are slowly going out of style have been proven to hinder the production of the melatonin hormone less than the fluorescent bulbs. I find this interesting because the people as a whole are going to have to choose between their personal health and being energy efficient.

Something interesting that stood out to me in the article The Claim: Daylight Saving Time Can Affect Your Health, by Anahad O’Connor, was that a claim was made that Daylight Savings Time will disconnect a person’s body time from the actual clock’s time which, can lead to greater intense health problems such as heart attacks and suicides, and the most common result, sleep disruption. As a first thought I was not convinced that a one-hour time difference would cause such great health problems, but then came to the conclusion that this constant change could eventually lead to the sleep problems, which could later develop into greater health risks.

The connection and direct correlation between light and health was new information to me, something that I am now appreciative of knowing.