Save your eyesight: Read this warning about the solar eclipse

Don’t look up – unless you have special eclipse glasses or other solar filters – during Monday’s solar eclipse.

That’s the firm advice of Dr. Richard Moors, a Fresno ophthalmologist.

“You can become legally blind, so you couldn’t drive a car and you couldn’t read,” Moors says.

In Fresno, about 72 percent of the sun will be blocked by the moon. But that’s plenty enough light rays to damage eyes.

The lenses in the eye concentrate the energy of light onto a relatively small part of the retina, the light-sensitive part of the eye, Moors says. And looking at the solar eclipse is equivalent to “taking a magnifying glass and pointing it at the back of the eye where it will literally cook the retina.”

The retina contains rods and cones, little receptors that perceive the light and turn it into electricity that goes to the brain, which acts like a computer to turn it into an image that we see. The rods and cones are what get burned out by the sun, Moors says. “They get cooked.”

But will a quick glance fry the rods and cones in the eye? Moors says the duration required for damage is unknown. “I don’t think there has been any studies done with human beings to have them look at the sun and then see how much vision they have lost. That would be totally unethical.” So why take the chance of losing your color vision, your ability to read or drive, he says. “The best thing is no exposure.”

The American College of Emergency Physicians says it expects a rush of eclipse-watchers in hospital emergency rooms across the country on Monday.

Moors, who began practicing ophthalmology in Fresno in 1976, says he can’t remember patients from the solar eclipse that happened that year, but he’s pretty sure there were people who had eye damage in the city.

And he expects to get calls at EYE-Q Vision Care on Monday that there are patients with eye damage who have gone to hospital emergency rooms. “It’s just amazing that people sometimes don’t pay attention and people think they can get away with it.”

What’s sad, he says, is there’s no treatment for the retina damage. If the exposure is very brief, some vision could return, he says, but there’s no guarantee. “And you don’t want them to lose any of their vision.”

Schools take precautions

Fresno and Clovis school districts are taking precautions to keep kids’ eyes safe.

At Clovis schools, there will be no unstructured outdoor activities such as recess during the eclipse window from about 9 to 11:45 a.m.

Fresno Unified school staffs have been told to keep students indoors unless they have special glasses and are doing a science experiment outside. And teachers who want to take their students outside had to send permission slips home to parents.

As for adults, if you have a pair of solar eclipse glasses, consider yourself lucky.

Protective lenses that meet international safety standards are a must to safely look at the eclipse, Moors says. Regular sunglasses do not provide sufficient protection.

The Bee contacted nearly a dozen stores Thursday, including big box retailers, hardware stores and even a welding supply company, and they were all sold out.

At National Hardware Supply in north Fresno, store employee Rick Shupe said the store has been selling a steady supply of protective lenses, normally used in welding goggles. Experts say the heavily shaded lenses are ideal for viewing the historic eclipse.

“We have been selling them like crazy for the last few weeks,” said Shupe. “And we sold our last 12 lenses today to a science teacher. People are really getting excited about this eclipse.”

If you are still in need of eclipse glasses, you may be able to find them online. For example, on Thursday, Amazon had three pair of paper-framed glasses for $79.95.

This story was originally published August 17, 2017 at 4:48 PM with the headline "Save your eyesight: Read this warning about the solar eclipse."