Light pollution becoming a bigger problem in Pennsylvania
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Scott LaMar
Airdate: March 3, 2023
Travel through Pennsylvania’s northern tier and there are places where you can drive miles through thick forests or without passing through a town. What you also won’t see is a lot of artificial lights in some of those areas. Many people who live in the Pennsylvania Wilds want to keep it that way.
But it’s getting harder as development continues.
Light pollution is not just an issue in rural areas.
On The Spark Friday, Sandy Goodstein, a volunteer with the Pennsylvania Outdoor Light Council defined light pollution,”Light pollution we like to describe to people is the improper use of outdoor space. We’re talking mainly about outdoor lighting now where it’s not being directed in the right thing, over lit in many situations and, you know, having lights on at times when it’s not needed.”
Mark Grosz is another volunteer. Both men said they became interested in light pollution because they were studies the sky through astronomy. Grosz added,”Flagstaff, Arizona, population 80,000, they can go out in their driveway at night and look up and see the Milky Way. Mechanicsburg is less than 10,000, and I can’t do that. Why? Cumberland Valley is a big place with a lot of development, a lot of lights. So that’s why we can’t see it. But you can do lighting in a way that still allows you to see the sky and also protects health. And because that same light pollution is affecting human health and the environment as well. So it’s just not missing the the beauty of the night sky. We can have all the light we need and have the dark sky. And that’s what we’re really trying to do.”
Goodstein said that one of the biggest factors in light pollution or light “trespass” is that lighting fixtures aren’t aimed properly,”Lighting down is what we’re talking about, because a lot of these issues with light fixtures are not aimed properly when they’re installed. And especially now with the we’re having the changeover to LED lights. It’s even more important that this is carried out in an installation of a lighting fixture. I’m sure a lot of your listeners, if you go out in the evening and just start driving around, some of these older lights where they wanted to light up, let’s say a parking lot area instead of having it figured out properly where all the lights are down, they’ll have one or two fixtures aimed straight up where half the lights go, going up into the air, not doing anything. The other half down there and the other out light is probably going into the driver’s eye causing glare, which is again affecting their vision for driving.”
