International Dark-Sky Association

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The International Dark-Sky Association (acronym: IDA) is a US-based non-profit organisation incorporated in 1988 by a group of astronomers in order to encourage darker skies (through lighting that creates less skyglow) in the USA, and, eventually, throughout the world by the setting up of other national organisations affiliated with the IDA. They also conduct research into (and campaign on) other forms of light pollution and its non-astronomical (e.g.: health) effects.

Although the perceived problem of excessive lighting leading to a lowered limiting magnitude of observable stars has existed since the 1950s (and possibly earlier), the IDA was one of the (if not the) first organisations in the dark-sky movement (of astronomers campaigning against skyglow) who are devoted only to combatting forms of photopollution.

Among other concerns, the IDA and related organisations are collating concerns regarding human public health as a result of documented effects on the night hours by light. The hypothesis is that human physiology requires more hours of dark than modern, western cultures now provide given the artificial light that this culture causes for its citizens through the lighting of streets and houses, resulting in elevated levels of cancer. The allegations surrounding elevated levels of cancer are unproven, and it is strongly suspected this is a red herring designed to win support for the campaign.

[edit] External links

• IDA WWW site
• Lighting for the human circadian clock: recent research indicates that lighting has become a public health issue, Medical Hypotheses, Volume 63, Issue 4, 2004, Pages 588-596, Stephen M. Pauley. Abstract