health benefits of solar

Besides offering big financial savings for businesses, schools, municipalities, and homeowners, solar power, heat, and lighting offers significant health benefits, too.

less pollution, reduced global warming
The most obvious health benefit of using solar energy is the long-term reduction of carbon emissions. Carbon emissions contribute to the “greenhouse effect” that has increased global temperatures in recent decades, and contributed to overall pollution. By using free energy from the sun instead of relying on polluting resources such as coal and gas, we can reduce this negative impact on the environment.

By replacing just one 93-watt fixture that operates 6 hours/day, 7 days/week with one solar daylighting fixture, a solar daylighting device can spare the environment up to 13 pounds of carbon dioxide emissions from coal-based generation, or 4.5 pounds of carbon dioxide emissions from oil/gas-based generation.

sunlight regulates your body clock for health
A less obvious benefit of sunlight is how it regulates several primary health functions in the human body. While health care costs are a top concern in the United States, many people don’t realize that artificial lighting can contribute to an increase in illness.

Natural light is much more healthful and beneficial because it synchronizes the human “body clock” (circadian rhythm), regulating a number of health functions in the human body, including cortisol production and alertness. This regulation reduces stresses on human health. In fact, in a U.S. Department of Energy study, employees who sit near windows were reported to have 20% fewer symptoms common to workers in “sick buildings.” Businesses with natural daylighting report a decrease in absenteeism and resulting health care costs. When natural light is introduced, absenteeism also drops as much as 25%, according to one major study.(1)

Artificial lighting can lead to diminished alertness, which can lead to accidents and worker injury and thus compound losses: downtime, excessive medical costs, and in some cases, retraining.

help for sufferers of Seasonal Affective Disorder
Adequate natural light can even offset the effects of genuine medical problems such as Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD), a mood disorder in which sufferers experience depression and other symptoms due to a lack of bright light. In fact, full–spectrum light therapy is often prescribed as a remedy for this serious disorder. While SAD usually occurs in the long, dark winter months, its symptoms can appear in any season in workers who spend several hours a day indoors without natural light.

sunlight is good for kids!
Natural daylight is especially beneficial for school populations. Classrooms without daylight can have a negative effect on children’s ability to concentrate and cooperate, and may even eventually impact annual body growth and absence due to illness.

One year–long study of 90 school children, conducted in Sweden, showed that a lack of daylight can disrupt internal body clocks, resulting in significant psychological and physiological impairment.(2)

Daylight helps kids develop their minds and social skills as well! In a study tracking 21,000 students in three states over a one–year period, students in classrooms with the most daylighting scored 20% higher on math tests and 26% higher on reading tests, compared to those with the least amount of daylighting.(3) In another study, the use of natural light in classrooms reduced reported incidents of aggressive, disruptive, and destructive behavior.(4)

easy on the eyes
Natural lighting can also reduce eye strain and fatigue, which can reduce the incidence of the headaches these conditions can cause.

better than poisonous CFLs
In recent years, compact fluorescent lights (CFLs) have been praised and eagerly purchased by “green” consumers and homeowners because they reduce carbon emissions. But what most consumers don’t know is that all CFLs contain mercury, a potent neurotoxin that can cause brain and kidney damage and can easily contaminate water. While most CFLs only contain a tiny amount of mercury, most contain enough to contaminate 6,000 gallons of water beyond safe levels. Low-mercury bulbs still contain enough to contaminate 1,000 gallons of water(5), but when consumers dispose of them in landfills (toss them in the trash) and they break open by the thousands in a landfill, groundwater contamination because a real health hazard. And since consumers have purchased millions and millions of bulbs in just the last two years, this environmental disaster can only grow.

Solar daylighting takes the best of sunlight and creates zero pollution. Even the sun’s harmful ultra–violet rays are filters out by Solargreen’s solar daylighting products, so you get only natural, pure, harmless light. And while the sun is shining, your daylighting generates no carbon emissions at all. So switch off the light and let the sun help you save the environment–and your community’s health!

¹Pennsylvania Power & Light

²National Renewable Energy Laboratory Report, “Daylighting in Schools: Improving Student Performance and Health at a Price Schools Can Afford,” 2000.

³Heschong Mahone Group for Pacific Gas & Electric Company (www.h-m-g.com)

⁴International Journal of Biosocial Research

⁵Shining a light on hazards of fluorescent bulbs, http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/23694819