Smartphone blues
Q: Did you see that smartphones make you go blind?
A: Doesn’t it depend on what you do while you’re using them?
Q: No, the headline says Blue light from phone screens accelerates blindness, study finds. And it goes on Light from digital devices triggers creation of toxic molecule in the retina that can cause macular degeneration
A: Yeah nah
Q: They didn’t study phone screens?
A: No
Q: Macular degeneration?
A: No
Q: Retinas?
A: Not as such, no.
Q: Ok, so was it mice? It’s always mice, isn’t it.
A: No, this was cells grown in a lab from standard cell lines then genetically engineered to produce the chemicals the eye uses to see blue light. Some of them were originally derived from mouse cells, and some were originally derived human cells — like the famous HeLa cell line.
Q:
A: You were going to mention that Thor movie, weren’t you?
Q: No, I’ve read The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks. Everyone should. But we nearly digress. If they didn’t use digital screens, what did they use? Sharks with lasers on their heads?
A: Close. No sharks. LED lasers.
Q: So why does this show phones make you go blind?
A: That isn’t what they were trying to do. They already believed blue light caused macular degeneration, and they were trying to find out how that works, on a molecular level. It’s clearer from their press release, though that still talks a lot about phones — the newspaper didn’t make this one up.
Q: Is it in the original research paper?
A: No, that’s written in High Biochemist. It’s got subheadings likeBLE-retinal induced PIP2 distortion is independent of GPCR-G protein activation
Q: How do phones even compare as a source of blue light, compared to other sources? Police car lights? University-themed webpages? The sky?
A: Even though your eyes squinch up in bright sunlight, the sun and the sky are going to be the big contributor
Q: Especially if your phone and computer switch to a tasteful sepia colour scheme at night, like they tend to nowadays.
A: So, maybe sunglasses.
Thomas Lumley (@tslumley) is Professor of Biostatistics at the University of Auckland. His research interests include semiparametric models, survey sampling, statistical computing, foundations of statistics, and whatever methodological problems his medical collaborators come up with. He also blogs at Biased and Inefficient See all posts by Thomas Lumley »
And you didn’t even mention the blue lights on Wellington buses.
Seriously though, I have macular degeneration, badly enough to need two eyeball injections every month. My specialist says there’s no evidence that computer screens cause the problem. At least not yet.
6 years ago