June 2026: Avoiding Light Fetish, Light Pollution News

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This Episode:

It’s a new Light Pollution News! This episode, I welcome back Night Light Consulting’s Ken Walczak, along with author and naturalist – and all around fascinating fella – Charles Hood; oh, and straight from the Soft Lights Foundation, Mark Baker joins us!

Today, what is going on at Big Bend?! Some good news in the policy world…and some troubling news in the policy world. We also have some health news this episode! Join us for all this and more, starting now!

Host:

Guests:

Ken Walczak

Ken is the founder of Night Light Consulting, a Board Member for Dark Sky International, and co-led the designation of the largest Urban Night Sky Place, the Palos Preserves!

Mark Baker

Mark Baker has a Bachelor of Science in Electrical Engineering from the University of California, Santa Barbara. Mark was a computer programmer for 20+ years and a middle school math teacher for 10+ years. Mark has been involved in the effort to protect people from LED light since 2016. Mark founded the Soft Lights Foundation as a 501(c)(3) non-profit registered in the state of Oregon in 2021. The Soft Lights Foundation is now one of the world’s leading advocacy groups for the protection of people from the harms of Visible Light radiation emitted by Light Emitting Diodes and for the protection of the natural night as a resource.

Charles Hood

Charles Hood has been a factory worker, a ski instructor, a dish washer, and a nature guide in Africa. He later went on to receive an MFA in poetry from UC Irvine, studying with Nobel Prize-winner Louise Glück. He is currently Professor Emeritus at Antelope Valley College.

Hood has published 23 books, including Wild Sonoma, with a foreword by Jane Goodall, and A Salad Only the Devil Would Eat, which was named the Nonfiction Book of the Year by the editors of the Foreword book review. His books about the world after dark include Nature at Night, from Timber Press, and Nocturnalia, Heyday Books in Berkeley.

Prior to these, his book Wild LA was named a Nonfiction Book of the Year by the California Association of Independent Booksellers. It has a 4.9 star rating on Amazon and is in its 5th printing.

Nature study has taken him across all fifty states and to eighty countries, from New Guinea to Madagascar, and to the South Pole. During these journeys, Charles has encountered 6,500 species of birds and over 1,000 species of mammals.

Along the way, he has been lost in a whiteout in Tibet, contracted (and survived) bubonic plague, been charged by a musk ox, and published over 800 photographs.

He is currently working on an essay about Confederate monuments, an essay about the history of panorama photography in the American West, an essay about bristlecone pines, and a poetry book that is a history of Lewis and Clark that is set in outer space. Later this summer, his oak tree book titled Acorns in a Nutshell will be published by Timber Press in Portland, Oregon. Charles owns thirteen headlamps, flashlights, and spotlights, and he currently lives in the Mojave Desert with two dogs and 5,000 books.

Full Article List:

1. Chicago was just named one of the world’s most scenic cities at night, Mark Peikert, Time Out.
2. Largest Border Wall Contract in U.S. History Awarded for Potential Wall in Big Bend National Park, Our Public Lands & Waters, Substack.
3. Ford Government’s bill 98 Could be the final Death Knell for Birds, Alexis Wright & Anushka Yadav, The Pointer.
4. Senate unanimously passes bipartisan resolution designating National Dark Sky Week, Gila Herald.
5. SB3037 – 104th General Assembly, Illinois Government.
6. Artificial light at night disrupts immune rhythms in wild rodents under semi-natural conditions, Environmental Pollution.
7. Association between bedroom nighttime light pollution and risk of hepatic encephalopathy in hepatocellular carcinoma patients: a prospective cohort study, Scientific Reports.
8. Effects of Exposure to Extreme Artificial Light at Night on Liver Oxidative Damage and Gut Microbiota During Pregnancy and Lactation in Mice, Animals.
9. Chronic Artificial Light at Night Exposure Disrupts Circadian Rhythms and Modulates P53 Gene Expression in a Rat Model of Colorectal Cancer, Journal of Medicine and Health Research.
10. Engineering glowing plants: recent progress and future directions for application-oriented design, Frontiers in Bioengineering and Biotechnology.
11. L.Y.R. – Dark Sky Reservation, Real World Records, Youtube.

Light Pollution News: June Highlights

Chicago Named One of the World’s Most Scenic Cities at Night Despite Heavy Light Pollution

Travel site Travelbag ranked Chicago among the world’s most scenic cities at night, citing its glowing Lake Michigan skyline, while the ranking methodology notably used light pollution as one of its scoring categories alongside Instagram hashtag volumes and skyscraper counts. In the broader rankings, New York outscored Hong Kong for the top light pollution position, while Sydney scored lower than Vancouver in the same category.

Trump Administration Awards Largest Ever Border Wall Contract Within Big Bend National Park

The Trump administration allocated the largest border wall development contract in US history to the section of the border running through Big Bend National Park, according to Our Public Lands and Waters, reversing earlier suggestions from administration representatives that roads parallel to the border would be pursued instead. Environmental, conservation, and resource laws that would otherwise require responsible planning have been waived, including in the adjacent Rio Grande Wild and Scenic River corridor. The full scope of the project and its potential impact on night skies and surrounding ecosystems remains unclear given conflicting statements from Customs and Border Patrol officials.

Ontario Passes Three Bills Effectively Dismantling Green Building Standards

Ontario’s Ford government passed Bills 17, 60, and 98 in rapid succession, collectively eliminating green building standards that took 15 years to establish, with Green Party leader Mike Schreiner calling the legislation the final death knell for such protections. Bill 17 potentially prohibited lighting studies and design requirements embedded in bird safe building standards, potentially eliminating the ability to mandate dimming and shielding. Bill 60 stripped local community control over green building codes including responsible lighting enforcement and migratory lighting ordinances, while Bill 98 removed any remaining local authority to require responsible fixtures or practices over developer objection. The province also replaced its 2007 Endangered Species Act with the Species Conservation Act, which critics say removed protections for many species that previously qualified for conservation.

US Senate Unanimously Passes Resolution Designating National Dark Sky Week

The US Senate passed a bipartisan resolution officially designating National Dark Sky Week, introduced by senators Mark Kelly, Catherine Cortez Masto, John Curtis, and Jacky Rosen.

Illinois Outdoor Lighting Bill Passes Senate Unanimously Before Being Significantly Weakened

Illinois Senator Laura Ellman’s bill SB3037 passed the state senate 54-0 before being substantially revised, with the final version amending the Illinois Energy Efficient Building Act to incorporate lighting standards into the voluntary Illinois Stretch Energy Code for commercial buildings rather than mandating statewide compliance. The bill sets outdoor lighting at no more than 25% of IES standards, caps light trespass at 1 lux, limits fixtures over 1,000 lumens to emitting no more than 5% of total lumen output above 80 degrees from nadir, and establishes a maximum color temperature of 3000K. Absent from the final version are the 0.1 lux light trespass limits for natural areas, sports lighting regulations, and any curfew on nonessential lighting, with compliance voluntary at the municipal level and a deadline of December 31, 2029 applying only to new or renovated commercial structures.

Artificial Light at Night Found to Disrupt Immune Timing and Increase Mortality Risk in Wild Rodents

Researchers at Tel Aviv University studied 160 spiny mice across nocturnal and diurnal species housed with and without LED lighting at 10 to 15 lux for over eight months, publishing results in Environmental Pollution. Under natural conditions both species showed clear 24-hour immune rhythms, with antibody responses measurably stronger when animals were vaccinated during their rest phase, but artificial light flattened those rhythms and eliminated the rest phase immune advantage. Mice in artificially lit groups faced a 2.35 times greater risk of death, though the drivers of mortality were not directly assessed and melatonin levels were not measured, making this an associative rather than mechanistic finding.

Bedroom Light Pollution Linked to Significantly Worse Outcomes in Liver Cancer Patients

A study in Scientific Reports followed 454 liver cancer patients across 10 communities for one year, measuring bedroom light levels with portable illuminometers. Patients averaging more than 50 lux of nighttime bedroom light faced 2 to 4 times the risk of hepatic encephalopathy impairment, a twofold increase in liver function deterioration risk, and nearly 3 times the risk of death compared to those sleeping in darker environments. The researchers did not measure melatonin or cortisol, and the elevated risk was most pronounced in older patients and those with advanced stage tumors, placing this study in the category of association rather than confirmed causation.

Continuous Artificial Light During Pregnancy Found to Alter Gut Bacteria in Mice and Their Offspring

A study in Animals kept pregnant and nursing mice under continuous 24-hour artificial light at up to 35 lux and tracked both mothers and their male offspring. Mothers showed elevated liver antioxidant activity and the complete absence of two types of beneficial gut bacteria, while offspring exhibited permanently reduced gut bacterial diversity with protective bacteria declining and inflammation-linked bacteria increasing. The gut imbalance persisted even after offspring were returned to normal nighttime darkness conditions.

Artificial Light at Night During Colorectal Cancer Study Triggers Precancerous Cell Behavior in Rats

Researchers publishing in the Journal of Medicine and Health Research exposed rats given cancer-causing chemicals to six hours of artificial light at night at approximately 430 lux for 12 weeks, comparable to office or workspace brightness. The light-exposed group showed suppressed circadian rhythms, elevated cancer blood markers, and cells exhibiting precancerous behavior, while rats given only the chemical carcinogen experienced inflammation but did not progress to precancerous activity. The study’s statistical foundation is limited by a final sample size of only 18 rats rather than the planned 30.

Researchers Develop Autonomous Bioluminescent Lighting Using Fungal Pathways in Plant DNA

A review in Frontiers in Bioengineering and Biotechnology details how researchers have inserted fungal light-producing pathways from Neonothopanus nambi into plant DNA, enabling plants to generate their own light autonomously through caffeic acid, a compound plants naturally produce. The research represents a potential avenue for biological light sources that could reduce dependence on conventional artificial lighting infrastructure.

Musical Act L.Y.R. Releases “Dark Sky Reservation” as Title Track of New Album

The musical act L.Y.R. released a new album in April featuring the title track “Dark Sky Reservation,” which draws its name and concept from the environmentalist designation for regions where light pollution is actively discouraged or prohibited to preserve astronomical observation and human connection to the night sky.

Light Pollution News: June Read Along

Let’s start off today by basking in the light pollution for a second! Ken, the land you call home has been named by some website called Travelbag as one of the most scenic cities at night! As the article says, “the skyline glowing over Lake Michigan is, truly, a sight for sore eyes.”

Pictured here is the skyline, which, from the picture, honestly doesn’t look that bad. One thing to note, the clouds…haha, the sky is a sea of white and orange! The buildings are darker than the sky!

It’s interesting that the ranking used light pollution as a category. Other categories included Instagram hashtag volumes and skyscraper counts. On the list, New York somehow outscored Hong Kong to take the light pollution crown. While Sidney scored lower than Vancouver with regard to light pollution.
Let’s start the news for today.

Is something fishy going on at Big Bend? You’ll recall a couple of months back that the Trump Administration planned to fully install a border wall along the Mexico-US border through Big Bend. That area, which I have seen firsthand, isn’t exactly a prime spot for crossovers given its absurdly rugged terrain. [Unless you’re coming to the border with trad climbing gear, you ain’t crossing much of it!] Plus, there’s already embedded infrastructure and tracking networks in place in the park – all of which you can learn about in our past episodes.

According to the Our Public Lands and Waters substack, the Trump administration single handedly allocated the largest ever contract for border wall development to the section of border sitting within the confines of Big Bend. Previously, representatives for the Trump administration walked back suggestions of building the wall, instead offering to pave roads parallel to the border, another awful idea, I might add. Paving roads would make it EASIER to navigate the park, not slow anyone down!

The funding for this derives from President Trump’s budget bill that was passed via reconciliation, which bypassed the 60 vote requirement to overcome a filibuster, essentially allowing a simple majority to dictate how we should both be taxed and have our money used.

The Trump administration has been waiving environmental, conservation, and resource laws that otherwise would force the government to come up with a responsible plan for these walls. Most recently, this occurred downstream from Big Bend, in the Rio Grande Wild and Scenic River. At this time, given the apparent, and I’ll say this judiciously, miscommunication from Customs and Border Patrol, I don’t think anything has been ruled out despite what the administration officials may say to your face. So truthfully, I don’t think anyone is sure what this looks like and what the true impact may be on night skies and beyond.

If you are interested in helping make your voice heard and you live in the US, I highly suggest you hold your elected officials accountable both at the ballot box during Midterms this November and reach out to engage in regular communication. There is also the group ‘No Big Bend Wall,’ you can find that link in the show read along this episode.
Across the Anglo world, we’ve been seeing the tug of war between developers and local communities, essentially a clash of what we in the US might call YIMBY vs. NIMBY, meaning ‘yes in my backyard’, or pro development at no obligation to the cost; versus ‘not in my backyard’, meaning anti-development with no obligation to provide room for growth. The YIMBY’s have been winning as of late. And at that, you wouldn’t be wrong to question whether YIMBYs have a perverse glee in obliterating ecology. Already this year, new regulations went into effect under the Species Conservation Act. This law replaced the 2007 Endangered Species Act. Critics contend that despite the name, the law removed protections for many of the species requiring conservation.

Well, three additional bills have passed that Green Party leader, Mike Schreiner, called the ‘final death knell into green building standards in Ontario.’ What took 15 years to put into effect is now swept away in a handful of months. Bill 17, passed last June, allowed the province to dismantle green building standard requirements. Bill 60 removed the local community’s control over green building codes. Then, most recently on May 14^th, Bill 98 passed, stripping away any last rights communities have to enforcing building code standards.

So here’s how this will impact nighttime lighting. I honestly don’t understand why responsible lighting practices can’t be part of the solution despite these rollbacks, but partisan dogma in these blindly tribal times is what it is, I guess. Logic and compromise seem to be as evasive in 2026 as wins for the NY Mets!

Embedded in bird safe design are mandatory responsible lighting requirements. Bill 17, the bill to dismantle green building requirements, prohibits lighting studies and design requirements, potentially eliminating the ability to require dimming and shielding. Bill 60, the bill that stripped local community control over green building codes, removed the ability for responsible lighting enforcement and potentially things like migratory lighting ordinances. And Bill 98, which ripped away any last local control over building code standards, effectively allowing developers to cheap out in their design and avoid using responsible fixtures and practices despite what the local community wishes.

Well, enough with the sad news stories, I do have some good ones. Back in April, the US Senate passed a resolution for National Dark Sky Week, senators included in introducing the bill were Mark Kelly, Catherine Cortez Masto, John Curtis, and Jacky Rosen.
But the big news, Ken, is this piece of legislation over in Illinois. For you at home, a lot changed around Memorial Day. I thought I had this bill all detailed, and then Illinois completely went a different direction! Let me recap to bring you, the listener, up to speed.

This year, Senator Laura Ellman introduced a new bill, SB3037. It expands the scope of the original bill to cover all state owned lands with a rather short compliance date of December 2026. The bill cruised through the Illinois Senate at 54-0 and is now passed concurrence on May 29^th. Between then and now, outlets like Inside Lighting raised the industry alarm on some wording within the legislation (namely the .1 lux requirement in an early version of the bill), and also on the ease of the Senate bill adoptions, stating “No dissents. No pushback. For a chamber not typically known for unanimous agreement on much of anything, that kind of vote demands a closer look.”

The final version of the bill landed here, veering away from covering state funded buildings and really much of what was in the original. The bill amends the Illinois Energy Efficient Building Act to incorporate lighting standards into the Illinois Stretch Energy Code for commercial buildings. Critically, this makes it go from a mandatory to a voluntary program. I want to stress just how voluntary this final version of the bill is going to be.

The Stretch code in Illinois is voluntary at the municipal level, meaning communities need to opt in to the code. Then, suppose they opt in, the compliance deadline is December 31, 2029. At that, it doesn’t affect current commercial structures, only new or renovated structures. And, unlike in the Senate bill, which saddled the Department of Central Management Services as an enforcement body, it would be up to municipalities to enforce the code.

What it contains is as follows:

• Outdoor lighting cannot be exceed above 25% of the IES standards.
• Light trespass cannot be greater than 1 lux.
• Lights at over 1,000 lumens are constrained to emitting 5% of their total lumen output over 80 degrees from nadir.
• Max color temperatures are 3000K.

But what it doesn’t contain is pretty interesting, as well:

• .1 lux light trespass limits in natural areas.
• Sports lighting regulations
• 10pm curfew on nonessential lighting, including the one hour after close lighting rule, as we saw in Palo Alto.

Over on the health front, an article came out of Environmental Pollution that looked at how artificial light at night disrupts immune timing in wild rodents. Researchers at Tel Aviv University studied 160 spiny mice, split evenly between nocturnal and diurnal species, and housed them in enclosures with and without LED lighting for over eight months. The light weighed in somewhere between 10 and 15 lux. Under natural conditions, both species showed clear 24-hour rhythms in circulating immune cells, and antibody responses were meaningfully stronger when animals were vaccinated during their rest phase. In the artificial light experimental groups, those rhythms flattened, and the rest phase benefits effectively disappeared. Per the study, mice faced a 2.35x greater risk of death!

With regards to the deaths, it should be noted that the drivers of mortality were not directly assessed here, rather, this is an association and not a confirmed mechanism of mortality. The melatonin angle also wasn’t measured.

Now, this study came up in the health segment because our human vaccination-immune mechanics work in a similar fashion. I suspect that many of you at home don’t sleep in environments where you have light entering your room, but to be certain, we’re not talking about a lot of light, we’re talking essentially about the amount of light you may get from hallway lights seeping into your bedroom or the glow of a streetlight through curtains. So the amount of light assessed, and even the duration, isn’t unrealistic.

Also here this month, out of Scientific Reports, a separate team looked at bedroom brightness, this time specifically trying to assess whether nighttime light pollution worsens an aspect of liver cancer patient outcomes, that being hepatic encephalopathy, which is a neurological condition that develops when the liver can’t clear toxins out of the body. The team studied 454 patients over 10 communities for a year. They measured bedroom light levels using portable illuminometers. Individuals averaging over 50 lux a night faced 2-4x greater risk of full hepatic encephalopathy impairment, along with a 2 fold increase in risk of liver function deterioration, and almost 3x the risk of death compared to those sleeping in darker environments.

Now, I need to caveat this for you at home. Here are the points to be aware of in this study. These results affected older patients and those with advanced stage tumors. Also, critically, the team did not measure melatonin or cortisol. That all being said, this study is not proving that light causes these outcomes, though it is saying that light potentially affects these outcomes. It’s yet another study that indicates associative mechanisms at work, in what is becoming a long line of studies showing association.

This one came into my feed as a health article, but it probably could go either way. Given that many nighttime mammals may now live in such environments, as well. A study in Animals examined whether always on artificial light at night during pregnancy and nursing caused lasting damage to liver health and gut bacteria in mice. And then asked whether those effects pass down to their offspring.

Researchers kept pregnant and nursing mice under continuous 24 hour light at up to 35 lux (3000-4000K in temperature). They tracked both the mothers and their male offspring, including a group that was returned to a natural nighttime cycle absent of light at night. In the mothers, stress on the body appeared to take the form of ramped up catalase antioxidant activity from the liver to counteract the stress of constant light. Two types of beneficial gut bacteria were also completely absent in these mice.

Now for the offspring, the variety of healthy bacteria living in their guts was significantly and permanently reduced, with protective bacteria declining and bacteria linked to inflammation taking their place. And the imbalance did not reverse itself even after the mice were moved back into normal nighttime conditions.

Finally, we have a study out of the Journal of Medicine and Health Research, it asked if artificial light at night makes colorectal cancer worse. Researchers split rats into three groups: a control group, a group given cancer causing chemicals, and a group given cancer causing chemicals plus exposed to six hours of artificial light at night at around 430 lux, or the brightness of a workspace/office. This went on for 12 weeks.

They found that the light exposed group lost much of its natural circadian rhythm. The group had a rise in cancer blood markers, and cells from the samples started to behave like precancerous cells. It should be noted that the rats that received the cancer causing chemicals didn’t advance to precancerous activity; they merely experienced inflammation. The downside of this study is the tiny sample size, which was supposed to be 30 rats, but ended up being 18, split evenly for control/treatments.

There were a few more really intriguing science pieces for this month. If you’re a supporter, you’ll see that in the monthly email with a link to all of the news we pulled for the month, not just the ones selected for the show. So be on the lookout for that.

Well, look no further than this piece out of Frontiers in Bioengineering and Biotechnology. A review was performed detailing bioluminescent lighting. Specifically, researchers have gathered through fungal pathways into plant DNA that they are able to create autonomous biological light sources. Specifically, researchers are using a fungus called Neonothopanus nambi for which light is produced through caffeic acid, a compound that plants naturally manufacture.

I want to close out today with some cultural news. The musical act L.Y.R. had a new album come out in April. The title track of that album was a song called ‘Dark Sky Reservation.’ Per the, kinda AI sounding description, ‘the term dark sky reservation has its origins in environmentalism…in that context, dark sky reservations are those regions of the landscape where light pollution is discouraged and even outlawed, to allow scientists and casual stargazers to peer into the cosmos and see the glory of the constellations, patterns of light that have entranced and mystified us for hundreds of thousands of years. It’s from those designated zones that human beings get a sense of their place in the universe, and experience the wonder of the here and now against a context of eternity and infinity.’