Guardian: Blue light from phone screens accelerates blindness, study finds
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Hi,
I recently read this Guardian article (https://www.theguardian.com/society/2018/aug/09/blue-light-from-phone-screens-accelerates-blindness-study-finds) and wonder what experts here think about this. Is f.lux the solution? There's another thread about blue light and retina damage, but it seems to be closed. Thanks!
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f.lux is very good at blocking light like this, but we do not think there is anything to worry about from this study. Light from screens is just too dim.
A blue sky (not the sun, only the blue part) makes 20 times as much light as a screen, and it occupies a lot more of the visual field. And it is likely the study used a lot more light than this.
The published article does not measure irradiance at the eye - it uses lasers that are explained using "power" and not "power/area", so for now we are assuming these results are a new mechanism (which is important) but that it falls in the existing hazard range, so we don't worry about it, because it's a ton of light.
The "blue light hazard" has been identified for many years and incorporated into international standards, and every LED is regulated by these, but typically these hazards happen at >10,000 cd/m2 for white light, as opposed to 200 cd/m2 for a typical display screen.
