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Chemists Discover How Blue Light Speeds Blindness

Isao writes: It (apparently) has been known that blue light damages eyes and accelerates macular degeneration. A new article on Phys.org may have identified how this happens. It seems that unlike other light colors, blue causes a necessary molecule (retinal) to permanently kill photoreceptor cells. "The researcher found that a molecule called alpha Tocopherol, a Vitamin E derivative and a natural antioxidant in the eye and body, stops the cells from dying," reports Phys.org. "However, as a person ages or the immune system is suppressed, people lose the ability to fight against the attack by retinal and blue light." The authors will continue their research and recommend filtering and blue-light reduction in the meantime. The study has been published in the journal Scientific Reports.

16 of 144 comments (clear)

  1. Rose colored glasses by jfdavis668 · · Score: 5, Funny

    Ok, from now on I'm looking at the world through rose colored glasses. That should stop all that blue light business.

  2. Well, that's all of us done for by BoogieChile · · Score: 5, Funny

    Back to the old amber CRT, then

  3. Gonna really suck for saltwater tanks/ grow lights by Khyber · · Score: 4, Informative

    Topic says it all. LED ones are especially blue-heavy (up to 80% of the overall output in saltwater reef tanks) and that's gotta cause some issues.

    --
    Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
  4. Blue light isn't the issue, getting old is... by cyn1c77 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    The blurb (and even the article) is jaded and implies that blue light causes blindness to ride the anti-screen wave.

    If you read it, you find that the issue is actually that the body makes alpha Tocopherol, a Vitamin E derivative, which keeps the photoreceptor cells from dying. Some people lose the ability to make that alpha Tocopherol as they age, leading to blindness.

    So the issue isn't to avoid blue light and buy crazy glasses... (how are you really going to avoid blue light if you ever want to see white again anyway? Are you going to stop looking at white paper?) Rather it's to find a way to keep supplying alpha Tocopherol to the eye as people age.

    1. Re:Blue light isn't the issue, getting old is... by Alsn · · Score: 4, Insightful

      That's true. However it could also mean that in the meantime the people who suffer from the deficiency could use filter glasses to keep their sight until a permanent treatment is discovered. Assuming that their findings are correct and that blue light is the only culprit.

    2. Re:Blue light isn't the issue, getting old is... by Khyber · · Score: 3, Interesting

      "Some people lose the ability to make that alpha Tocopherol as they age, leading to blindness."

      Did you just quit reading AND thinking there? Next bit clearly states that people with compromised immune systems or weakened ones from disease are also susceptible. Guess what a hospital is loaded with? Hint: Look all around one, and then look up.

      We also know (I've been fucking saying this for almost a decade, now, when I was doing global horticultural lighting design) that grow lighting is triggering macular degeneration in younger healthier population. This doesn't mean your mom and pop in their 50s+, this is happening as early as a persons 20s.

      --
      Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
    3. Re:Blue light isn't the issue, getting old is... by Greyfox · · Score: 3, Interesting

      DMSO Tocopherol eyedrops a couple times a week? I suppose someone'll have to do a study on exactly how safe DMSO would be for eyeballs over long periods of time.

      --

      I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?

    4. Re:Blue light isn't the issue, getting old is... by mentil · · Score: 4, Funny

      No, no, you have to inject it directly into the eye twice daily. Good thing, I'm terrible at using eyedrops without blinking.

      --
      Corruption is convincing someone that the selfless ideal is the same as their selfish ideal.
    5. Re:Blue light isn't the issue, getting old is... by Khyber · · Score: 5, Informative

      https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/p...

      That's from 2006, before I started designing and selling horticultural LED lighting, from the British Journal of Ophthalmology.

      --
      Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
  5. Re:It's harmful only if you already have a problem by magarity · · Score: 3, Insightful

    So as soon as I figure out how to stop aging I won't have this issue?

  6. Re:Excellent by mikael · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Blue light in this context is just that - regular blue pixels on a computer screen. There are night-safe modes which tone down these pixels.

    Your retinas has around seven layers of rods, cones and processing neurons. Light is refracted through the lens so that infra-red light hits blood vessels, red light which has a longer wavelength and travels less deeper into the retina hits the upper layers. Blue light in this context is goes into the deepest layer of the retina because the wavelength is shorter and has more energy. UV light gets filtered out by the lens (but causes cataracts in the long term).

    --
    Vintage computer adverts: http://www.vintageadbrowser.com/computers-and-software-ads
  7. Re:Correlation by Khyber · · Score: 3, Interesting

    No, as at the time of the introduction of the blue LED, efficiency and output was horrible, and even an incandescent light of equal power consumption output more light below the 470nm range than the LED did.

    Around the early 2000s is when blue LEDs began to gain in efficiency to the point where they were commercially viable for use in just about any consumer product.

    I'd suggest starting to look around 1997-2004 for the beginning of an increasing trend.

    --
    Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
  8. Time to switch to green CRTs by OrangeTide · · Score: 4, Funny

    Time to throw away all this 4K HDR LCD garbage and go back to good old monochrome.

    P.S. - Does anyone know how I can hook up a Hercules ISA card to PCIe?

    --
    “Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
    1. Re:Time to switch to green CRTs by drinkypoo · · Score: 3, Interesting

      P.S. - Does anyone know how I can hook up a Hercules ISA card to PCIe?

      No need, you can hook it up to USB. It would be easier, though, to get a display card with a VGA output and fix the cable to omit the blue line. You'd still get colors, just not as many, and none of them would be at all blue.

      --
      "You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
  9. Re:We're in an old villa and use "Warm white" bulb by Nethead · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Nice to see that someone is still messing with resistors that have bands. You must like the old cruft like I do. My issue is the focus now. Many many years ago I was able to solder a 40 pin flat pack without glasses. Now I'm lucky to find the damn iron without technological assistance.

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    -- I have a private email server in my basement.
  10. Amber colored glasses by Solandri · · Score: 5, Interesting

    The amber glasses used by shooters work by blocking blue light. The lens in your eye is a simple lens, so suffers from chromatic aberration. It does not focus the different colors of light onto the exact same spot. So what you see can be sharpened by blocking one end of the visible spectrum - red or blue. Your eyes are most sensitive to detail in green, less so in red, and suck at resolving blue. So blue light can be filtered out with very little effect on visual acuity (other than color accuracy). With less chromatic aberration, what you see appears slightly sharper.