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Blue light has gotten a bad rap, getting blamed for loss of sleep and eye damage. Personal electronic devices emit more blue light than any other color. Blue light has a short wavelength, which means that it is high-energy and can damage the delicate tissues of the eye. It can also pass through the eye to the retina, the collection of neurons that converts light into the signals that are the foundation of sight.
Laboratory studies have shown that prolonged exposure to high-intensity blue light damages retinal cells in mice. But, epidemiological studies on real people tell a different story.
As an assistant professor at The Ohio State University College of Optometry, I teach and conduct vision research, including work with retinal eye cells. I also see patients in the college's teaching clinics. Often, my patients want to know how they can keep their eyes healthy despite looking at a computer screen all day. They often ask about "blue-blocking" spectacle lenses that they see advertised on the internet.
But when it comes to protecting your vision and keeping your eyes healthy, blue light isn't your biggest concern.
One way to think about blue light and potential retinal damage is to consider the Sun. Sunlight is mostly blue light. On a sunny afternoon, it's nearly 100,000 times brighter than your computer screen. Yet, few human studies have found any link between sunlight exposure and the development of age-related macular degeneration, a retinal disease that leads to loss of central vision.
If being outside on a sunny afternoon likely doesn't damage the human retina, then neither can your dim-by-comparison tablet. A theoretical study recently reached the same conclusion.
(Score: 5, Informative) by bradley13 on Monday October 21 2019, @09:53AM (1 child)
Indeed, there is a lot of evidence now that the sharp rise in short-sightedness is due to lack of exposure to sunlight during early childhood. China (or some regions, anyway) now mandates two hours of outside playtime for small children - precisely because the evidence for this is so strong.
What we have here is just the result of crappy journalism: Journalists taking "blue light" = "sleep problems" and concluding that blue light is bad. Where the actual correlation is that blue light messes with your circadian rhythm, because your body associates it with sunlight. It's nice, that this guy is correcting the record.
It would be even nicer if more science journalists actually had some clue about science, because corrections like this never get the same publicity as the original, erroneous articles.
Everyone is somebody else's weirdo.
(Score: 2) by darkfeline on Tuesday October 22 2019, @04:16AM
Do you have any links? I strongly doubt that sunlight prevents short-sightedness, it's just that sunlight corresponds to being outside corresponds to not staring at things at close distance all the time. My working theory is that if we just give kids reading glasses, we will drastically reduce short sightedness.
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