- 3 months ago
Highlights from this episode:
Crime
Weight Loss
Heart Health
Lawsuits
Intro and outro music by Doctor Turtle
Sponsored by The National Association of Innovative Lighting Distributors visit https://naild.org/
Headlines and Sources:
Pennsylvania Street Light Changes Dropped Crime in Some Neighborhoods
https://phys.org/news/2025-10-street-safety-effect-crime.html
Melrose Park, FL residents Push Back on New Lights
https://www.yahoo.com/news/articles/dark-streetlight-fight-divides-florida-110000063.html
IR and Near-IR Boost Dopamine
https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/photonics/articles/10.3389/fphot.2025.1647467/full
Cohort Study Links ALAN with Cardiovascular Disease
https://bioengineer.org/nighttime-light-exposure-linked-to-increased-risk-of-cardiovascular-disease/#google_vignette
Circadian Disruption Linked with Neurodegenerative Disease
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41593-025-02067-1
Naps Are Good For You
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-025-21008-3
Night Shifts Are Bad for the Children of Working Moms
https://www.mdpi.com/2624-5175/7/4/60
New Method for Assessing Sleep and Circadian Rhythms in Cardiovascular Research
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11906-025-01345-4
Non-Invasive Alternative to Post-Operative Ganglion Blocks
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1186/s13741-025-00601-0
Glare Can Be Reduced with Color Without Changing Brightness
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-025-21737-5#Sec27
Charting US Sleep Inequality Along Other Inequalities
https://www.md pi.com/2624-5175/7/4/59
New Study of Circadian Nutrition and Weight
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1186/s41043-025-01102-y
Eating Habits Linked with Seasonal Rhythms
https://digitpatrox.com/dietary-fat-dictates-seasonal-eating-rhythms-study-finds/
Solar Eclipses and Bird Circadian Rhythms
https://www.earth.com/news/solar-eclipse-reveals-that-darkness-resets-birds-biological-clocks/#google_vignette
Circadian Rhythm Linked with Clock Gene Per1 in Mice
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1186/s13293-025-00756-x
University Xiangya School of Medicine IDs Nanoparticles Related to Sleep Deprivation and Cognitive Deficits in Rats
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41420-025-02738-9
Lack of Light Harms Rat Puberty
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-025-21236-7
Angoni Vlei Rats Affected by ALAN
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/07420528.2025.2570415
ALAN Boosts Mosquito Activity
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0048969725023320
Luna 2 goes live Nov 1
https://designlights.org/news-events/news/the-dlcs-new-led-technical-requirements-designed-to-meet-this-moment
Architecture Contest: A Home with No Lighting
https://bustler.net/news/10665/design-a-home-with-no-artificial-lighting-the-home-of-shadows-edition-4-is-launched
DHS Secures $5B in Wall Building Funds
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/dhs-announces-nearl
Crime
Weight Loss
Heart Health
Lawsuits
Intro and outro music by Doctor Turtle
Sponsored by The National Association of Innovative Lighting Distributors visit https://naild.org/
Headlines and Sources:
Pennsylvania Street Light Changes Dropped Crime in Some Neighborhoods
https://phys.org/news/2025-10-street-safety-effect-crime.html
Melrose Park, FL residents Push Back on New Lights
https://www.yahoo.com/news/articles/dark-streetlight-fight-divides-florida-110000063.html
IR and Near-IR Boost Dopamine
https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/photonics/articles/10.3389/fphot.2025.1647467/full
Cohort Study Links ALAN with Cardiovascular Disease
https://bioengineer.org/nighttime-light-exposure-linked-to-increased-risk-of-cardiovascular-disease/#google_vignette
Circadian Disruption Linked with Neurodegenerative Disease
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41593-025-02067-1
Naps Are Good For You
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-025-21008-3
Night Shifts Are Bad for the Children of Working Moms
https://www.mdpi.com/2624-5175/7/4/60
New Method for Assessing Sleep and Circadian Rhythms in Cardiovascular Research
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11906-025-01345-4
Non-Invasive Alternative to Post-Operative Ganglion Blocks
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1186/s13741-025-00601-0
Glare Can Be Reduced with Color Without Changing Brightness
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-025-21737-5#Sec27
Charting US Sleep Inequality Along Other Inequalities
https://www.md pi.com/2624-5175/7/4/59
New Study of Circadian Nutrition and Weight
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1186/s41043-025-01102-y
Eating Habits Linked with Seasonal Rhythms
https://digitpatrox.com/dietary-fat-dictates-seasonal-eating-rhythms-study-finds/
Solar Eclipses and Bird Circadian Rhythms
https://www.earth.com/news/solar-eclipse-reveals-that-darkness-resets-birds-biological-clocks/#google_vignette
Circadian Rhythm Linked with Clock Gene Per1 in Mice
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1186/s13293-025-00756-x
University Xiangya School of Medicine IDs Nanoparticles Related to Sleep Deprivation and Cognitive Deficits in Rats
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41420-025-02738-9
Lack of Light Harms Rat Puberty
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-025-21236-7
Angoni Vlei Rats Affected by ALAN
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/07420528.2025.2570415
ALAN Boosts Mosquito Activity
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0048969725023320
Luna 2 goes live Nov 1
https://designlights.org/news-events/news/the-dlcs-new-led-technical-requirements-designed-to-meet-this-moment
Architecture Contest: A Home with No Lighting
https://bustler.net/news/10665/design-a-home-with-no-artificial-lighting-the-home-of-shadows-edition-4-is-launched
DHS Secures $5B in Wall Building Funds
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/dhs-announces-nearl
Category
🗞
NewsTranscript
00:00Hi there, I'm recording this on October 29th, 2025, and that means two things.
00:10An anecdote is not a fact. A fact is not data. And data is not a conclusion.
00:17But, this is an anecdote I'm going to use for my entire career.
00:23And that is that the Louvre was robbed of the Second Empire's crown jewels at 9.30 in the morning.
00:35I'm never letting that go.
00:38Especially because we're going to be talking about crime in a few minutes.
00:41But, before we do that, I have to mention that this is the Darkness News Update.
00:46And it is brought to you by the National Association of Innovative Lighting Distributors.
00:51Home of the only lighting professionals that really care about making darkness conservation work at the street level.
01:03You can visit Nailed.org for more.
01:07But let's get into the news.
01:08Because we have a great bit of research from Pennsylvania, Pittsburgh,
01:15as they switched their streetlights from HBS to LED.
01:20And a group of researchers found that, yes, actually, switching to LED, brighter, whiter sources,
01:27dropped crime in some neighborhoods.
01:30Street crime in the area dropped as much as 15%, with a 21% drop in gun violence.
01:38But the interesting thing about all this is that, alongside crime data, the research team were surveying residents
01:48and talking about how their behaviors were changing as the lights came online.
01:53They talked to business owners about how the lighting changed how people approached their businesses after dark.
02:02And the other thing is that this team also ran a study a few years earlier about how a litter pickup program,
02:12literally guys, city employees, picking up trash out of the gutters and the sidewalks,
02:20and they found that crime dropped then too.
02:23So the issue may not actually be about visibility, it's about care.
02:32We have a case for broken windows policing that isn't about the policing, it's actually about the windows.
02:41And I'm very curious to see how this develops.
02:44Speaking of crime, there is a neighborhood in Fort Lauderdale called Melrose Park.
02:50They've been without street lighting at all.
02:54Zero street lights for decades.
02:57Currently, City Council in Fort Lauderdale wants to add 555 lights to the neighborhood.
03:04And locals don't want it.
03:07They don't want the taxes, they don't want the traffic,
03:11and they don't want the possibility of crime being facilitated by the fact that there's no light.
03:18There's a lot of kinds of crime, obviously.
03:20They're talking about, you know, loitering, potential drug deals, other things.
03:26And this is not the first time this neighborhood association has done this.
03:32Ten years ago, the city wanted to add a thousand street lamps to the space.
03:38And they won then.
03:40So we'll see how that goes.
03:42I'll keep an eye on this.
03:44All right, back to the more typical format.
03:47Let's start with the research side of things.
03:49Because we have a new study from Hefei that shows that infrared and near-infrared light boosts your dopamine.
04:00That's right.
04:01These are researchers using PC LEDs that ran 710 and 830 nanometers.
04:07So pretty deep on the red side of things.
04:10And they found that it did activate neurotransmitters for dopamine fairly consistently.
04:16Which means that this could be a treatment for myopia, a number of neurodegenerative diseases.
04:25It might also just be nice.
04:26And it might also explain why lighting a candle makes you feel better, even though, you know, it's just lighting a candle, right?
04:35We have a new cohort study published in JAMA that links Allen, light at night, with cardiovascular disease.
04:44This study was able to balance satellite data with personal light meters, and they tracked nighttime exposure to subjects over 40.
04:56And they found that as light increased, the risk of cardiovascular disease, which is to say heart attack, heart disease, and stroke, all rose at the same rate light rose.
05:10We have a new study that shows that circadian disruption has been linked with neurodegenerative diseases.
05:18Specifically, this group, this study tracked context and cell-dependent expressions alongside the glial gland function in Alzheimer's and aging minds.
05:30We have a new small study, small study.
05:3381 adults were asked to nap, and they determined that naps are good for you.
05:37They were asked to snooze for nine minutes, and they were given a digit symbol substitution test, as well as tests for sleepiness and fatigue.
05:48And it turns out that the performance on all metrics before and after the nap were better.
05:55So, I don't know, maybe we all just need a little siesta.
05:58Maybe we all need that.
05:59Maybe that's what we need.
06:00Night shifts continue to be bad, not just for women, but their children.
06:07The University of Sao Paulo has observed that activity and sleep cycles of both parents who work the night shift and their children are adversely affected by the shift work.
06:22This is a generational issue, apparently.
06:24We have a new method from the University of Alabama at Birmingham to assess sleep and circadian rhythms in cardiovascular research.
06:35They are trying to improve patient care with new guidelines and for caregivers in hospital settings.
06:43We have a new non-invasive alternative to post-operative ganglion blocks.
06:47So, usually when you go in for a mastectomy, it is common to actually inject something that blocks your ganglion cells so that you can rest better.
07:02But this new study has determined that a small, polarized light burst at the same time you would normally give an injection is better overall.
07:12We have a new study from Stanford University that shows that glare can be reduced with color, with lenses.
07:20It doesn't change the brightness.
07:23This is an LED.
07:25They had, the Stanford team had done an LED glare study that just used filters.
07:30And now they're doing the same study again with sunlight.
07:32And they found that, yes, if you use green, blue, or neutral lenses, even neutral lenses, they cut the subjective glare metric compared to red lenses, which could be something that goes ahead going forward.
07:48We have the University of California in Fresno charting sleep inequality alongside other social inequalities.
07:56This is based on self-reported sleep loss, but they are also tracking other social factors like education, race, income, substance use, as well as employment status and commute time.
08:11And what they actually found is that the real leading cause of sleep loss in these communities is the length of commute and their employment status.
08:21So if you're talking about gig workers or part-timers, they are having worse time than other people who even live in the same neighborhood.
08:31We have a new meta study that shows that circadian nutrition, circadian eating, not even nutrition, is good for your weight.
08:39This meta study shows that if you time your eating, and I mean alongside your circadian rhythm, this is not an endorsement of intermittent fasting.
08:48This is just like, hey, if you time your calorie intake with your circadian rhythm, you will lose weight, even if you don't run a calorie deficit.
08:57Your eating habits are also linked with your seasonal rhythms.
09:01Guess what?
09:02We are going into winter, and believe it or not, going into winter, you just crave fattier, calorie-rich food, and that kicks into high gear.
09:11And you can also maybe trick yourself into thinking it's summer if you mess around with your lighting and mess around with your fat intake.
09:21Circadian rhythm has been linked with the clock gene PER1 in mice.
09:27Penn State has found a link to circadian rhythm and PR1.
09:31PER1 is also linked with memory.
09:33So this is to say that if you misalign your circadian rhythm, your memory will suffer, even if you're otherwise healthy.
09:42University of Xinyang has identified a nanoparticle related to sleep deprivation and cognitive deficits in rats, which means that we might actually have a treatment for that.
09:54Like, that nanoparticle can be replicated artificially, and we can give that to people who are low on sleep.
10:00We also have a study that shows that continuous dark exposure hurts the development of Leydig cells in rats, which means their puberty, for males at least, is delayed because they aren't getting a lot of night and light during the day.
10:18Speaking of rats, the Angoni Vle rat is perhaps more behaviorally flexible in terms of temporality than previously believed.
10:29Because reducing the amount of light they get in the day changes their activity cycle, which may mean that they're just, you know, they may benefit from light pollution in a way that isn't great because rats spread diseases.
10:45Allen, light at night, boosts mosquito activity.
10:49Specifically, the egg-laying habits and larval growth of species associated with yellow fever are more common in well-lit areas.
11:01The Design Lights Consortium has launched Luna 2, or will launch Luna 2 in two days.
11:07The light usage for night applications requirement version 2 goes ahead on November 1st, which means that any lighting fixture certified under Luna 1 has already been delisted.
11:20That started on the 1st of October.
11:23We have a new architecture contest for a home with no lighting.
11:27This is the fourth year that the Home of Shadows competition is running, and designers are challenged to create a home that only uses daylight, and the four prizes are split across 10,000 pounds.
11:42That's right, 10,000 pounds split four ways if your design goes well.
11:46You can submit if you've got one, or you can just wait around with me to see who wins.
11:51That'll be something we can do.
11:53On the U.S.-Mexico border, the Department of Homeland Security has secured $5 billion in wall-building funds.
12:02Projects are now expanding out of Texas into Arizona and California, with stadium lighting and connected surveillance tech going ahead as planned.
12:11The DHS has waived procurement rules for that infrastructure, which is to say that they don't necessarily have to do environmental assessments.
12:21They don't necessarily have to go through vetting processes for contractors, and they don't have to be subject to Build American by American rules as they do this.
12:34Part of that plan also includes a federal judge pausing a lawsuit that would have paused construction on the border wall in Arizona.
12:44Because of the shutdown, they're just going to let that go through.
12:47Also, there is going to be more lighting on the Rio Grande River.
12:53The Big River River.
12:55That's what I just said.
12:56I'm sorry.
12:57But yeah, on the river itself in Texas, they are planning buoys to block transit by swimmers.
13:05And again, more lighting to, again, block transit by swimmers.
13:09The environmental community continues to voice its objections to all the lights and all the interventions.
13:18Because as much as people try to cross the border to the U.S., animals do too.
13:25And butterflies don't need visas.
13:28And that's all I have to say about that for now.
13:32In the U.K., the mayor of London is calling for more health support for workers that work at night.
13:40He's calling for additional health checks from the NHS and changes to employment law that would limit the number of consecutive night shifts anyone can work.
13:50We'll see if that follows through.
13:52We have a group of VAT advocates calling out a proposed planning bill in the U.K.
13:59The restoration fund model that labor is trying to push through is functionally a fee-for-destruction model that will not necessarily lead to restorations anywhere else.
14:13In Basingstoke in the U.K., a special needs school is, um, there is a special needs school and is in a conservation area.
14:24And they're swapping out all of their lighting to full cut-off wallpacks so that they can respect the local bat population.
14:32In Amsterdam in the Netherlands, the Artes Zoo has switched out all of their lighting and become the EU's first urban night sky place,
14:42per Dark Sky International.
14:44This is the city's first no-light district.
14:48In Phoenix, Arizona, the Dark Sky Discovery Center has installed their telescope.
14:53Uh, this is an ongoing project.
14:55They have just added a 27.5-inch optical telescope, which will make it the biggest telescope in the Phoenix metro area.
15:04In Pennsylvania, they observed their fifth lights-out week.
15:07This started out as an advocacy campaign for bird migration season, but it is leading to more education overall in the field of night conservation.
15:17On the Isle of Man, again back to the U.K., Port Arran is flipping all of their street lighting to dark sky-compliant LED options,
15:26which is 294 posts.
15:28That'll be full cut-off, warm color temperature, low brightness, minimum brightness.
15:33In Texas, the town of Midlothian is debating monument sign brightness,
15:39which means that their monuments will now be 60% dimmed below manufacturer spec, near residential neighborhoods.
15:48In Utah, the town of Torrey has hosted their Citizen Science Night Sky Brightness event.
15:53They do this twice a year.
15:55Uh, this is in partnership with the Entrada Institute and the Capital Reef National Park.
16:01Citizens are asked to track the brightness of certain constellations, or the visibility of certain constellations,
16:07to help them understand how bright the area is and what they can do to change that.
16:12So, in China, the Taihang Conservation Area has charted light pollution from nearby cities,
16:18noting that Xinjiang City's lights aren't an effect on them right now.
16:23They are 68 kilometers away.
16:25But if anything changes in the city, that could become an issue,
16:29and they are going to be pushing the regional government to limit light pollution from that area.
16:35In California, the town of Humboldt has reported on changes since they implemented their new lighting ordinances.
16:41Uh, the actual lighting ordinances only kicked in in August,
16:45but they are already seeing improvements, and they're already happy with it.
16:49The town of Easton, Pennsylvania, is, uh, debating a new darkness ordinance,
16:53with City Council hearing from a rep from the Easton Environmental Advisory Council
16:59talking about limiting uplight and limiting glare.
17:03In Arizona, the Cochise County Authority has approved new campgrounds,
17:08uh, despite, uh, lighting bylaws.
17:11They have issued a variance.
17:12This was after a three-hour meeting about not just lighting,
17:16but also water use and noise,
17:19and they ended up going in favor of the developer.
17:23In Lawrence, Missouri, the Bird Alliance is opposing a new development at the Baker Wetlands.
17:28Uh, this is a large set of, uh, this is a housing development,
17:33this will have a shopping center, this will have a golf course,
17:36this will have tennis courts.
17:37It's, it's, it's, it's a lot of development very quickly,
17:41and it's right next to a bird habitat,
17:43and they'd really like it if, um,
17:45there were lighting rules that protected that habitat.
17:48In New Mexico, the town of Taos,
17:51Taos is pushing for dark sky status,
17:53with the council meeting on potential lighting ordinances.
17:57In Prince Edward County, Ontario,
17:59they are moving to secure darkness over the South Shore.
18:03Uh, that is part of a partnership with the Royal Astronomical Society of Canada
18:07in changing lighting rules for the region.
18:10In Georgia, 12 counties have pushed back on lighting and noise from data centers.
18:16Uh, the rules are a bit varied, and they may not be super effective,
18:20but we are seeing, again, that neighborhood effect,
18:23that idea that once one county, one region, one municipality institutes a lighting rule,
18:28we see them spread.
18:29We see those rules spread, and we see it pushing back on data centers,
18:34which, uh, don't employ a lot of people,
18:36but do seem to need a lot of lighting for some reason.
18:40In the lawsuit rule, world, in the, in the world of lawsuits,
18:46uh, we have a new zoning lawsuit going ahead in Kearsad,
18:50in the Kearsage Lighting Precinct of California.
18:53This is a B&B and wedding venue that is pushing against the Special Lighting District
18:59so that they can have more nighttime events,
19:02and that has been in court off and on for the full year.
19:05However, the Utah Supreme Court has paused construction on a LDS temple in Haver Valley,
19:13the Wasatch-Back County,
19:15and, uh, the LDS, the Latter-day Saints, are going ahead with an appeal.
19:20In Wisconsin, the Shalom Wildlife Zoo has been sued by its neighbors over lighting.
19:27Uh, this is a private zoo in Washington County,
19:30and, uh, their neighbors are concerned about the level of brightness
19:33that they are using at night.
19:35And, um, yeah, probably not all that great for the zoo animals,
19:39but we will see how that goes.
19:41We have a new petition for LED headlight regulation in the U.S.
19:47Change.org remains the yelp of extra-electoral political engagement.
19:52The European Space Agency has announced a new Space Environment Health Index.
19:58This new metric will sound the alarm over the presence of junk in low orbit,
20:05and the alarms are already sounding.
20:09It's already bad.
20:11Relatedly, we have a new paper from the IEEE
20:14saying that we may already be experiencing the Kessler Shock.
20:18The Kessler Shock, or the Kessler Syndrome,
20:20was proposed by Don Kessler,
20:22who noted that as we put more things in orbit,
20:26that number of things in orbit can only multiply
20:29as they break and collide into each other and create more debris,
20:33and we may already be having to deal with a disaster mode
20:36of small things hitting each other way up there,
20:40limiting our options for what we can do in space further on.
20:44Also, astronomers are protesting Reflect Orbital's plan
20:50to put 4,000 mirrors in orbit.
20:53Reflect Orbital wants to use mirrors to reflect light down back to the Earth,
20:59either for agricultural needs, or for solar power generation,
21:03or for anything related to, say, even emergencies.
21:07But astronomers are like,
21:09actually, that's more objects in space,
21:12and also, the light pollution would play havoc with the natural world.
21:18And John Barentine and Robert Massey are calling this whole thing terrible.
21:24And it is the day before Halloween when this comes out,
21:28and you can go to darksky.org
21:30and celebrate the darkness with their pumpkin templates.
21:34These are printable objects.
21:37These are things you can print out.
21:38You can follow them along.
21:39You can cut out your jack-o'-lanterns
21:42and show off your pride about bats and dark skies.
21:46And they're fun.
21:47They're fun.
21:48We're closing out on fun today,
21:49because we've dealt with some heavy topics.
21:51Otherwise, I've been Scott Wachter.
21:54I want to thank you for your time, your attention.
21:56If you feel like donating to the Softlights Foundation,
22:01that's great.
22:02You can go to restoringdarkness.com and find the link there.
22:05You can also just support the show with a review or a recommendation.
22:10I will catch you in two weeks.
22:11Otherwise, take care of yourself.
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