Part-time Naples resident Dr. Mario Motta was going to pursue astrophysics when he was younger but went into medicine instead.
Motta retired in 2022 after nearly 40 years as a cardiologist in Massachusetts. While he chose medicine as his profession, Motta has been an amateur astronomer throughout his life.
He has built most of his own telescopes — down to the optics — including a large 32-inch telescope that may be the largest assembled at home. He’s used it to discover planets around other stars.
Increasing light pollution soon attracted his attention, and around 1990 he met epidemiologist Richard Stevens, who told him about research on how light exposure at night suppresses melatonin production.
Melatonin is hormone crucial to human immune system function.
Research shows that suppressing melatonin production through excessive night lighting, especially blue light, leads to health effects, including an increase in certain endocrine-related cancers. It is now known that circadian disturbance causes a 20% to 30% increase in breast and prostate cancers.
In 2017, the Nobel Prize in medicine was awarded to three scientists who showed the biochemical pathways that lead to increased cancer because of melatonin suppression. Obesity, diabetes and metabolism issues are also increased by melatonin suppression.
Motta and Stevens have collaborated on a number of papers, collecting and presenting information about the links in nighttime light exposure and health, and they have led to real-world results in how night light — especially blue light — should be used because of potential health impacts.
Click Listen above to hear Motta discuss the nexus between light pollution and human health, the environment and public safety, on WGCU’s “Gulf Coast Life.”
