Monday, July 23, 2012
Exposure to Artificial Lights Has Been Proven to Have Negative Effects on Human Health
Everyday we sit in classrooms, bedrooms, living rooms and offices filled with artificial lights and don't think twice about what exactly "artificial light" means or entails. In the article "Nighttime light exposure linked to health impacts, AMA encourages more study"(http://www.enn.com/pollution/article/44694), the author Judy Siegel-Itzkovich writes that the AMA, The American Medical Association, the largest association of medical physicians in the United States has released an official statement saying that health hazards posed by exposure to artificial light for hours at work or during sleep. The AMA supported the research of professor Abraham Haim of the University of Haifa's Israeli Center for Interdisciplinary Research on Chronobiologys. Haim's research stated that exposure to excessive artificial light especially at night has negative effects including a disruption of sleep, exacerbating sleep disorders and causing unsafe driving. The article also elaborates that the AMA's policy supports use of artificial light technologies that minimize circadian disruption.
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This is a huge problem. Artificial light includes back-lit screens such as computer monitors, tablets, and phones. Checking your phone is one of the last things people do at night and one of the first things they do in the morning. This study sheds light on the health implications of the proliferation of mobile and computing technology.
ReplyDeleteThis is really surprising to me that artificial light could affect our health in this way. I never would have imagined that it would affect our sleep. I have plenty of friends who sleep with their TVs on most of the night. It is also something that we can't really change. I could not cut the amount of time I spend when it comes to getting things done in the evening and doing school work on the computer. Realistically even if it were proven that artificial light had a negative impact on health it would have to be a pretty bad situation before a significant amount of people would give it up. We are just much to reliant on our computers, phones, Tvs ect to give them up that easily.
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