Green space or light at night – how do we improve health?
There is a growing body of evidence that exposure to green space is good for our health but a new study from the University of ÐÂÀ˲ÊƱ has found that this may equally be due to how much light we are exposed to at night.
Spending time in green space can improve depressive symptoms, obesity, and sleep problems, and reduce the risk of breast and prostate cancer. Conversely, exposure to light at night, particularly urban light pollution, increases the risk of breast and prostate cancer, and can worsen depression, obesity and sleep problems.
“We have shown that green space is inversely associated with outdoor artificial light at night, making it unclear whether health outcomes result from the green space, the light at night, or possibly in an interaction of the two.â€Dr Jessica Stanhope
Researchers identified a negative correlation between green space diversity and outdoor artificial light at night for Australian major cities – in other words, the greener your environment, the less the light pollution, and vice versa.
This makes intuitive sense, because the more developed an area is, the fewer trees there will be and the more lights there will be.