Feeling Blue

What are these wavelengths and how are mobile phones affecting our health? Ew seeks advice from the experts

- Danae Mercer

The hottest accessory isn’t the latest designer bag or shoe – it’s the mobile phone. A study earlier this year revealed that for every 100 people in the UAE, there are 228.3 mobile phones. YouGov reports that UAE residents spend about five hours per day on their mobiles, clicking through social media or chatting online with friends. Throw in the amount of time we spend at our computers and one thing is clear: our glowing screens are a central, immutable part of our lives.

Yet is all this screen time destroying our eyes and skin? Recently experts have been debating whether or not the blue light emitted from phones, computers and tablets might be leading to ageing, skin pigmentation and eye damage.

UNDERSTANDING BLUE LIGHT

The sun contains visible light rays and invisible ultraviolet rays. Each type of light has its own wavelength and energy. Blue light is one of the shortest and highest-energy wavelengths of light.

Blue light is pretty much everywhere. It’s in the sun. It’s in flat screen TVs, computers, notebooks, smartphones and numerous other devices we use on a daily basis. And according to some experts, there’s a particular danger in blue.

Since blue light has one of the shortest and highest-energy wavelengths, it can penetrate the skin more deeply than UVA and UVB lights, dermatologist Dr Howard Murad told the Times newspaper in the UK. “It has been shown to generate more free radicals – unstable compounds that have been associated with accelerating the ageing process – than UVA and UBV combined.”