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The changeover to low-energy LED lighting – for outside as well as inside lighting – began about 20 years ago and has increased in pace lately. Stock photo

The increasing use of LED outdoor lighting is causing serious disruption to wildlife and the climate in Ireland and beyond.

B lue artificial light has been identified as being especially harmful, according to research in the journal Science Advances.

The changeover to low-energy LED lighting – for outside as well as inside lighting – that began about 20 years ago has increased in pace recently.

British and Spain-based researchers wrote in their paper: “Although this has been characterised as a technological lighting revolution, it also constitutes a revolution in the environmental costs and impacts of artificial light at night.

“Particularly because the LEDs commonly used for outdoor lighting have significant emissions at the blue wavelengths to which many biological responses are particularly sensitive.”

There are also concerns among scientists in Ireland about how artificial light is affecting the lives of many animal and plant species.

“Artificial light has multiple effects that we already know about,” said Andrew Jackson, associate professor of zoology at Trinity College Dublin.

“Most simply, it opens up more time for animals to be active, so the pressures on their prey become greater.

“There are also documented physiological effects such as on key hormones like melatonin, which plays a key role in regulating the day-night cycle of behaviour in animals and also features in the immune system.”

Artificial light also disrupts animals’ ability to use the stars for navigation and their capacity to find their way home, the Prof Jackson said.

Most of the research into the effect of artificial light is on insects as they are prey for birds and animals and so can indicate what is happening in the wider ecosystem.

When artificial light affects insects – and the evidence shows it does – it has knock-on effects for the birds and bats that depend on them as a food resource.

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Wildlife living in urban areas are most affected by artificial light LEDs, but, given the sustained increase in such lights in rural areas over the past two decades, as well as increased urbanisation, there are fewer places left unaffected, scientists say.

“The paper shows very clearly that while Ireland has more of the less impactful orange light compared with the rest of Europe, we are transitioning to more of the blue LED light that has been linked with biological impacts,” Prof Jackson said.

“We can almost certainly expect this trend to continue, and we can similarly expect more of the kinds of impacts on individual animals and whole food webs that the authors report.”

Brian Espey, associate professor of physics at Trinity, said the Government has shown little interest so far in regulating the growing problem of outdoor lights at night.

He has researched light pollution in Ireland and is chairman of Dark Sky Ireland, which is funded by the Heritage Council.

The skies are darker in the west, and Prof Espey would like to see it stay that way, as he says it is a precious resource when compared with most of brightly lit Europe.

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