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"Let there be light on Mpls. streets" (editorial, Nov. 26) advocates for more and brighter lighting throughout the city. But it begs the question: What kind of light?
Such an unconditional appeal is like advocating for feeding hungry people without regard for whether the food they're given might be unhealthy.
As a career-long graphic designer, and a writer/blogger about how to celebrate small wonders, I am perhaps more aware than average of the power and peril of color. And, in the case of the light in which we choose to bathe our city, it's more than a question of aesthetics.
Paul Bogard, a fellow Minneapolitan and author of "The End of Night: Searching for Natural Darkness in an Age of Artificial Light," addressed the issue in a July 2016, opinion piece on these pages, titled "LED streetlight change puts cities in new [harsher?] light."
The essence of Bogard's commentary was that the growing embrace of high-color-temperature LED (Light Emitting Diode) technology for street lighting by cities across the U.S. is an ill-considered decision with far-reaching effects on those cities' inhabitants, human and otherwise.
He cites research from the American Medical Association and the World Health Organization showing that light emitted by the types of LEDs being considered — those with the bluish-white light of Kelvin-scale color temperatures over 4,000 degrees — compromises human health, causing sleep disorders, confusing circadian rhythms and even increasing risks for some types of cancers.