{"id":61696,"date":"2012-06-20T14:00:20","date_gmt":"2012-06-20T18:00:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/?p=61696"},"modified":"2012-06-25T16:18:11","modified_gmt":"2012-06-25T20:18:11","slug":"ama-health-implications-of-light-at-night-serious","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/2012\/06\/ama-health-implications-of-light-at-night-serious\/","title":{"rendered":"AMA: Health Implications of Light at Night \u2018Serious\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Richard<\/a>
Richard G. Stevens<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The American Medical Association is acknowledging the growing evidence of health problems associated with exposure to artificial light, and is taking action that could lead to more government funding of research in this area.<\/p>\n

The AMA\u2019s House of Delegates has voted to accept the recommendations of a report from the AMA Council on Science and Public Health, which address changes in lighting technologies and usage, recognition of the impact on sleep and sleep disorders, and further study of the possible link between light at night and cancer risk, obesity, and exacerbation of chronic diseases such as diabetes.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt is a recognition by a major health body, the American Medical Association, that this is an emerging environmental issue that has a potentially large impact on the health of society,\u201d says cancer epidemiologist Richard Stevens<\/a>, professor in the UConn School of Medicine Department of Community Medicine and Health Care. \u201cBased on an accumulation of evidence, this august body is now making the statement: \u2018We take this seriously, and the public should take it seriously too.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

The adoption of the council report\u2019s recommendations by the AMA has the potential to influence federal grant money to study the health impact of artificial light at night.<\/p>\n

Stevens was heavily involved in the writing of the report, titled \u201cLight Pollution: Adverse Health Effects of Nighttime Lighting.\u201d He is lead or co-author of nine of the research papers cited.<\/p>\n

In scientific circles Stevens is widely credited with being the first to articulate the hypothesis that the increasing use of artificial light at night may be related to the high breast cancer risk in the industrialized world. His research in that topic goes back 25 years.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s no question that this light at night changes our physiology in the short term,\u201d Stevens says. \u201cWe know that artificial light disrupts circadian rhythms. We\u2019re learning more and more about the specifics of what that means. The clearest evidence is about the hormone melatonin. We\u2019re lowering it, we\u2019re even suppressing it completely, depending on the amount of light.\u201d<\/p>\n

Melatonin has been shown to inhibit breast cancer in laboratory rats. Stevens is careful to say that the changes in human physiology from artificial light, circadian disruption and melatonin suppression have not been proven to cause breast cancer. Instead he offers a judicial analogy:<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s guilty in a civil trial, but no verdict in a criminal trial. A reasonable jury would say there is a preponderance of evidence, but it\u2019s not beyond a reasonable doubt at this point.\u201d<\/p>\n

Five years ago, the cancer research arm of the World Health Organization declared night shift work as a \u201cprobable carcinogen.\u201d<\/a> Stevens was on the panel of scientists that made that determination.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n
\n

<\/em> <\/em> <\/em> <\/em> <\/em> <\/em> <\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Follow the <\/em>UConn Health Center<\/em><\/a> on <\/em>Facebook<\/em><\/a>, <\/em>Twitter<\/em><\/a> and <\/em>YouTube<\/em><\/a>. <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

UConn Health Center cancer epidemiologist Richard Stevens contributed to a report acknowledging artificial light’s adverse health effects and recommending further study.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":111,"featured_media":61699,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_crdt_document":"","wds_primary_category":0,"wds_primary_series":0,"wds_primary_attribution":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[179,1],"tags":[],"magazine-issues":[],"coauthors":[57,2010],"class_list":["post-61696","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uconn-health","category-uncategorized"],"pp_statuses_selecting_workflow":false,"pp_workflow_action":"current","pp_status_selection":"publish","acf":[],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-05-06 08:47:24","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/61696","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/users\/111"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=61696"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/61696\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":61948,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/61696\/revisions\/61948"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/media\/61699"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=61696"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=61696"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=61696"},{"taxonomy":"magazine-issue","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/magazine-issues?post=61696"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=61696"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}