Now scientists say climate change is making us BLIND

Climate change may accelerate the rate of blindness, a study suggests.

Canadian researchers compared the number of vision problems experienced by 1.7 million people in all 50 US states.

They found that those living in warmer regions were up to nearly 50 percent more likely to have severe vision impairment compared to those living in cooler regions.

Exposure to stronger ultraviolet light damages the cornea, lens and retina and also causes irritation and infection.

The experts said the findings were “deeply concerning” in the context of global warming, which has caused average global temperatures to rise by two Fahrenheit (1.1 degrees Celsius) since the late 1800s.

Study co-author Esme Fuller-Thomson, a gerontologist at the University of Toronto, said: ‘With climate change, we expect an increase in global temperatures. It is important to monitor whether the prevalence of visual impairment among the elderly will increase in the future.’

Dr. Thomson, who is also director of the Institute of Life Course Aging at the University of Toronto, added: “This association between visual impairment and mean local temperature is very concerning if future research indicates that the association is causal.”

The study, published in the journal Ophthalmic Epidemiologylooked at people aged 65 and older between 2012 and 2017.

For the survey, the participants answered the question: ‘Is this person blind or does he/she have serious trouble seeing even with glasses?’

Those who answered ‘yes’ were considered to be severely visually impaired.

In the paper, the conditions patients likely had included cataracts, in which the lens of the eye becomes cloudy and is one of the leading causes of blindness in the US, glaucoma, when the optic nerve is damaged, and conjunctivitis, or inflammation of the eye. lining due to irritation or infection.

Compared to people living in states with average temperatures below 50F like New York and Maine, those in states with temperatures above 60F — Florida, Texas and Georgia — are most at risk.

Those who lived in areas with an average annual temperature of 55 to 59.99F — such as Virginia, Kentucky and California — were 24 percent more likely to have vision problems.

People in states with an average temperature of 50 to 54.99F were 14 percent more likely to struggle.

Scientists cautioned that the study was observational, meaning it couldn’t prove that warmer temperatures led to vision problems. They said further investigation was needed.

But in the paper, the University of Toronto-led team suggested several hypotheses about how warmer weather increased the risk of vision problems.

One theory suggested that the increased exposure to ultraviolet light from sunlight led to more damage to the lens and other parts of the eye, increasing the risk of conditions such as cataracts.

Higher temperatures may also increase the risk of vision problems by increasing the likelihood of contracting an infectious disease, they said, such as fungal keratitis — when a fungus infects part of the eye.

Warmer weather also leads to more airborne pollutants, which scientists warn could change the structure of parts of the eye.

In their conclusion, the scientists said, “If the relationship is determined to be causal, the predicted increase in global temperatures may affect the number of older Americans with severe visual impairment and the associated health and economic burden.”

Each year, more than 24 million Americans are affected by cataracts, one of the most common eye conditions and the leading cause of blindness in the US.