About the Author

John Ott was the developer of time-lapse photography; much of his work was featured in Walt Disney nature films. While working on these projects, he discovered the importance of lighting in growing certain flowers. Experimenting, he discovered that exposure to light and other radiations also affects animal and human growth. His research is causing science to revise its opinions about the therapeutic benefits of light.

‍Pg. 24 "Most ordinary glass stops over 99 per cent of the ultraviolet radiation whereas some plastics allow approximately 95% or more to pass through."

Pg. 53 "If the basic chemistry of the human body responds to glandular actions controlled by the pituitary gland responding to light energy, then-as plants- the characteristics of the light energy would be a very important factor. Different types of light and lighting conditions ranging from natural unfiltered sunlight to various kinds of artificial light, or natural sunlight filtered through different kinds of glass, or light reflection from different kinds of glass, or light reflected from different colored interior decorations in a room could affect the physical well-being of an individual

Pg. 59 “My particular reason for not wearing dark glasses was that in addition to the glass itself filtering out virtually all the ultraviolet and certain other shorter wavelengths of sunlight energy, the characteristics of the light are further changed depending on the color of the glass. This acts as a filter restricting the transmission of all the other colors or wavelengths and transmits a peak of energy of the particular wavelength of whatever color the glass happens to be.”

Pg.  60 “Furthermore, after several days of not wearing glasses at all, my eyes were no longer so extra sensitive to the bright sunlight even on the beach.”

Pg. 60 “To me the results were convincing enough: that light received through the eyes must stimulate the pituitary or some glands such as the pineal gland about which not too much is known.”

Pg. 95 “I began thinking about the results of adding a little long wavelength or black light ultraviolet to the ordinary incandescent light source of the microscope and it seemed to me to be quite significant, especially when coupled with the exceptionally satisfactory results obtained in the breeding of rabbits in the ultraviolent transmitting greenhouse”

Pg. 99 “In a simple preliminary experiment, the cholesterol level in the blood of the mice kept under dark blue fluorescent under red light. Many  of the male mice under blue light became obese; this tendency was not noticed in the females.

Pg. 106 “The full spectrum of natural sunlight, including both the visible and invisible rays, under which life on this earth has evolved, is known to be of direct benefit to man. In reporting on the effects of exposure to ultraviolet.”

Pg. 107 “If human skin is not exposed to solar radiation (direct or scattered) for long periods of time, disturbances will occur in the physiological equilibrium of the human system. The result will be functional disorders of the nervous system, Vitamin-D deficiency, a weakening of the body’s defenses, and an aggravation of chronic diseases.”

Pg. 107 “An unnecessary degree of fear of ultraviolet exists, probably as a result of a general lack of understanding of the difference in the relative intensities of the near, or long, wavelength ultraviolet and the far, short-wave ultraviolet in natural sunlight at the surface of the earth. The atmosphere filters stops virtually all of the far short wavelength ultraviolet except for a trace amount, but does allowed the near long wavelength ultraviolet to pass through in amounts comparable to the intensity of visible light. Thus, life on earth has evolved under the balance of short wavelength ultraviolet comparable to the very low levels of general background radiation and much higher intensities of long wavelength ultraviolet comparable to that of visible outdoor natural sunlight.”

Pg. 112 “Could the lack of the normal amount of ultraviolet in sunlight received through the eyes possible cause a condition of hormonal or chemical in-balance and in turn make the skin hyper-sensitive to sunlight as far as skin cancer is concerned?”

“The amount of light actually entering the eye depends on the size of the pupil which is controlled by the iris.”

“Tanning of the skin accomplishes essentially the same purpose of cutting down the intensity of the light that penetrates the outer surface and this way helps prevent sunburn.”

Pg. 113 “The experiment consisted of fitting a patient with an ultraviolet transmitting contact lens for one eye and a non-ultraviolet transmitting lens over the other eye. Indoors, under artificial light containing no ultraviolet, the size of both pupils appeared the same but outdoors, under natural sunlight, there was a marked difference. The pupil covered with the ultra-violet transmitting lens was considerably smaller. This would seem to indicate that the photoreceptor mechanism that controls the opening and closing of the iris responds to ultra-violet wavelengths as well as visible light.

Pg. 125 “I designed an experiment to determine if some of the wavelengths of general background radiation, beyond the range of human vision, might be directly controlling at least some of the so-called circadian rhythms.

Pg. 127 “the opening action of these buds is not due to the absence of visible light but possibly to the presence of some form of nighttime reaction. It therefore becomes apparent that some biological responses in plants react to certain areas of the so-called general nighttime background radiation in a positive way, rather than merely to the absence of the visible light during the dark nighttime period.”

Pg. 129 “What is possibly of great significance is the indication of biological responses in both plants and animals to such minor variations of extremely low levels of radiation

Pg. 129 “Too often these low levels of added radiation-Tv sets, microwaves, long distance telephone relay towers, police, weather and airport radar systems, nuclear generating stations, atom bomb tests, medical and dental X-ray machines, fluoroscopes, diathermy, radioactive isotopes, electron microscopes, some types of computers and office machines, high voltage electrostatic air filters, and AM-FM radio and TV broadcasting stations- are shrugged off as amounting to no or more than “background radiation”, but when all are added together, They can soon double or triple the so called “normal background” level and, as we’ve seen, sometimes these added low levels turn out to be not as low as originally thought. There is still much left to be learned about the biological effects of this so-called “background” radiation, and how much it may be increased without also having its adverse effects on man’s behavior, physical conditions and thought processes.”

**Pg. 155 “**Aluminum foil is a very good reflector of visible light and a particularly good reflector of ultraviolet wavelengths."

Extras:

I sat next to the daughter of the late Dr. Albert Schweitzer. Our conversation dwelt mostly on her experiences as assistant to her father at Lambarene, on the west coast of Africa. I asked about the rate of cancer of the people in that area, and she replied that when her father had first started the hospital they found no cancer at all, but that now it was a problem I asked if the people living there had started installing glass windows and electrics lights in their otherwise simple surroundings and she said they had mot. Then I half jokingly asked her if any of the natives wore sunglasses.

She looked startled and then told me that the natives paddling their dugout canoes up and down the river in front of the hospital often wore no more than a loin cloth and sunglasses, and indeed some only wore the sunglasses. She father explained that sunglasses represented a status symbol of civilization and education and had a higher abating value than beads and other such trinkets. There is of course, no scientific proof of a correlation between the wearing of sunglasses and cancer, but it does raise an interesting question.

1961, the communicable Disease Center of the UUS Public Health Service in Atlanta reported that a school in Niles, Illinois, had the highest rate of leukemia of any school in the country, In fact, it was five times the national average. I made a point of visiting the school and talking with the superintendent, the head maintenance man and also some of the teachers who had been at the school, since it was built, I learned that all of the children who developed leukemia had been located in two classrooms, and that the teachers in these particular classrooms customarily kept the large curtains drawn at all times across the windows, because of the intense glare from the extensive use of glass in the construction of there new, modern building. On examining these curtains I found that they were not completely opaque, but more of a translucent type of material that allowed some of the outdoor light to penetrate and which gave them a greenish appearance.

With the curtains constantly closed, it was necessary to keep the artificial lights on in these two classrooms, and I learned from the head maintenance man that the original tubes installed were warm white fluorescent, which are very strong in the orange pink part of the spectru. After several years of this regular procedure of keeping the curtains closed and the lights on, the classroom teachers of these two particular rooms left the school and their replacements preferred to leave the curtains open and the lights off unless needed.

I also learned that at about this time there was a general replacement of the warm white fluorescent tubes and that the new tubes were cool white, which are not as strong inn the orange pink part of the spectrum, and which were not lit continuously, but only as needed. As the time of my visit in 1964, there had been no further leukemia cases reported for several years. No explanation for the previous unusually high rate of leukemia at this school had ever been found, but the problem no longer existed and the situation had returned to normal