How important is eye safety during a solar eclipse?
How damaged can your eyes get if you look at the solar eclipse without proper protection?
Jeffrey Walline, acting dean of the Ohio State University College of Optometry, emphasized the importance of keeping everyone’s eyes safe during the solar eclipse and every day.
“The difference between a day with an eclipse and every other day is just that we are more likely to look at the sun during the eclipse,” he said. “But we should never look directly at the sun.”
What damage can happen when you look directly at the sun?
Walline said when you look at the sun, the damage it can cause is similar to getting a sunburn on your skin.
“Just a few hours or minutes in the sun can burn your skin. It can also burn the back of your eye, the seeing part called the retina,” he said. The skin on your shoulder and your arms can heal, and it heals relatively quickly. But the retina in the back of your eye cannot heal, so you can lose vision permanently.”
While someone might start feeling sunburn on the skin in several minutes to a few hours, the eye can get seriously burned in seconds to minutes.
Even just a few brief glances at the sun can cause permanent damage to a person’s retina and quality of vision.
Advice to view the solar eclipse
Walline said to only look at the solar eclipse through regular sunglasses or through a camera lens with protection.
There are several guidelines on how to D.I.Y. solar eclipse viewers.
Ohio Department of Health director Dr. Bruce Vanderhoff said to double-check that glasses are up-to-date and safe if you’re purchasing them.
What you should be looking for is glasses from a reputable source with the ISO12312-2 label printed on them,” Dr. Vanderhoff said. If your glasses are not from a reputable source and don’t have that printed directly on them, you should not use them.”
