The Alchemy of Us: How Humans and Matter Transformed One Another

Chapter 5 explores electric lighting and its effects on health. Scientists experimented with artificial light for years before Thomas Edison invented the lightbulb. Edison is celebrated as the inventor of artificial light. As Ramirez explains, however, Edison’s light bulb would not have been possible without William Wallace, the creator of the carbon arc lamp. Wallace’s lamp functioned by passing electricity over two thick carbon wires, resulting in an overly bright light that burned out too soon after contact with oxygen.

Edison’s breakthrough came in September 1878, after a visit to Wallace’s home. Wallace unexpectedly received a telegram from Edison asking to see his newest invention—the carbon arc lamp. Edison appeared at Wallace’s home a few days later with several prominent scientists and a reporter from the New York Sun. Wallace and Edison discussed their shared hope of creating new forms of illumination before Wallace took the group to his third-floor lab for a demonstration. Captivated by the carbon arc lamp, Edison pored over Wallace’s diagrams before rushing home to experiment with his own system of artificial light, which drew heavily on Wallace’s. The respect and recognition Wallace long dreamed of seemed to be within reach. What Wallace failed to anticipate, however, was Edison running with his idea and cutting him out entirely: “September 8, 1878, was supposed to be the best day of William Wallace’s life. It wasn’t. Instead, it was the day that his own light went dark” (127).

Inspired by Wallace’s invention, Edison sought to subdivide light to make it less bright. To accomplish this, he needed material that glowed but did not disappear when heated. In other words, he needed an incandescent material. After testing different materials, Edison turned to carbon, the material Wallace used. He created a glass vacuum to help the carbon filaments survive without reacting to oxygen. He also used high-quality cotton to make the filaments more durable. Edison succeeded in creating a luminous, lasting bulb in 1879.

The invention of electric lighting solved many problems. However, Ramirez posits that artificial light can also have a negative impact on health because too much of the wrong kind of light affects the body’s circadian rhythm—that is, the natural, internal process that regulates the sleep-wake cycle, which repeats every 24 hours—and hinder the body’s self-repair, which occurs at night. People who work nights, such as security guards and surgeons, are at higher risk for cancer and cardiovascular disease. Using dim lights during nighttime hours can mitigate the problems caused by disruptions in the body’s circadian rhythm, as can smart bulbs that change in hue depending on the time of day. Ramirez supports her argument about the impact of artificial light on health by citing the work of Mariana Figueiro, the director of the Lighting Research Center at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI), and Richard Stevens, a cancer epidemiologist at the University of Connecticut. Figueiro studied various ailments in relation to where people live, what they do, and who they are. Ruling out all other medical factors, she determined that the cause for these ailments was artificial lighting: “The lights disrupt their body clock, or circadian rhythm, bringing about these health issues” (131). Ramirez also references the work of Stevens, whose research suggests that the rise in cases of breast cancer might be explained by electric lights. Stevens points out that blind women are at a lower risk for breast cancer, possibly because they cannot perceive light at night. These scholars, as well as those not cited in the main body of the text, appear in Ramirez’s annotated bibliography, which provides a rich guide for further reading.