Photopollution

Photopollution is excess or obtrusive light created mainly by humans. Among other effects, and like any other form of pollution, it disrupts ecosystems, can cause adverse health effects, obscures the stars for city dwellers, wastes energy, adversely affects wildlife and interferes with astronomical observatories.

Light pollution is largely the result of bad lighting design, which allows artificial light to shine outward and upward into the sky, where it's not wanted.

The human light spills into the natural world, some aspect of life like migration, reproduction and feeding are affected.

Light is a powerful biological force, and on many species it acts as a magnet. The effect is so powerful that scientists speak of songbirds and seabirds being "captured" by searchlights on land or by the light from gas flares on marine oil platforms, circling and circling in the thousands until they drop.

Other nocturnal mammals, including desert rodents, fruit bats, opossums, and badgers—forage more cautiously under the permanent full moon of light pollution because they've become easier targets for predators.

In a very real sense, light pollution causes us to lose sight of our true place in the universe, to forget the scale of our being, which is best measured against the dimensions of a deep night with the Milky Way, the edge of our galaxy, arching overhead.

Sources:http:/ /en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Light_pollution, http:/ /ngm.nationalgeographic.com/2008/11/light-pollution/klinkenborg-text