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Make lighting healthier

Artificial illumination can stop us sleeping and make us ill. We need fresh strategies and technologies, argues Karolina M. Zielinska-Dabkowska.
  1. Karolina M. Zielinska-Dabkowska

    1. Karolina M. Zielinska-Dabkowska is a lighting designer, assistant professor at the Faculty of Architecture, Gdansk University of Technology, Poland, and the International Association of Lighting Designers EU Regulatory Affairs Working Group Member.

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Life on Earth evolved in day-and-night cycles. Plants and animals, including insects such as the fruit fly, have a biological clock that controls their circadian rhythms — as the 2017 winners of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine showed. Now, humans’ increasing reliance on artificial lighting is changing those rhythms1.

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Nature 553, 274-276 (2018)

doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-018-00568-7

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