Let’s have a quick check on your eyes right now. Are they irritated? Are you blinking excessively? Are the words glaring right off your screen? Perhaps, it’s time to give your eyes a little break… right after you finish reading this post! In this post, we will follow this study on the possible consequences of light pollution on [our] retina[s] to find out more about how light damages our eyes and why we should protect them from increasing light pollution.
How Light Damages Our Eyes
It should not come off as a surprise to most of us that excessive exposure to artificial light damages our eyes. As the highest endogenous photosensitizers within the body, the retina is highly responsive to light and therefore, highly sensitive to damage. Luckily for us, our eyes not only naturally adapt to changes in light, but they are also built with mechanisms that protect us from certain forms of light exposure. However, when we are exposed to high-intensity light or light for an extended period of time, our eyes get damaged in the process. This damage mainly occurs through the cell death of photoreceptor cells or retinal pigment epithelium cells that leads to retinal degeneration and blindness. In other cases, prolonged exposure to artificial light can also activate and accelerate genetic eye diseases such as retinitis pigmentosa (RP) or macular degeneration (AMD) (featured picture). The video below shows a news coverage on the ills of LED light and its related impacts on human health.
The Dangers of Proliferating Exposure to LED-Lights
Perhaps some of you might be relieved that you have been consciously protecting your eyes and hence free from all these problems. However, growing light sources like LEDs on the streets should concern us. With groundbreaking benefits such as $8million (60%) annual energy savings cost of Los Angeles from replacing over 150,000 streetlights with LEDs, LEDs have started growing at an unprecedented rate. They are used both indoors and outdoors, increasing our exposure to them. This trend translates directly to changes in light wavelengths and intensities we are exposed to on a day-to-day basis — and this means danger.
The study brought direct attention to increasing LED-light exposure to retinal damage. It reveals that the compounded effects of increasing light exposure (notably the lack of darkness at light) on top of high irradiance exposure by LED technology have the potential to encourage cell death and its related diseases. Furthermore, LED-lights are found to produce retinal damage in all intensities and wavelengths examined in the study. Hence, we might be well off looking beyond the many benefits of low-cost and high-efficiency LEDs to re-examine the use of LEDs for artificial illumination.
Till next time!
Trudie
References:
- Contín, M. A., Benedetto, M. M., Quinteros-Quintana, M. L., & Guido, M. E. (2016). Light pollution: the possible consequences of excessive illumination on retina. Eye, 30(2), 255-263.
- Drake, N. (2019, April 3). Our nights are getting brighter, and earth is paying the price. National Geographic. https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/2019/04/nights-are-getting-brighter-earth-paying-the-price-light-pollution-dark-skies/
- Prince of Dark Gifs. (2016, October 17). bloodshot eyes tired GIF [gif]. gyfcat. https://gfycat.com/weakidealisticbluebreastedkookaburra