Regular, Heavy Doses of Sunlight, Cataracts Linked

Regular exposure to heavy doses of sunlight makes a person three times as likely to develop cataracts, a study of Chesapeake Bay watermen showed Wednesday.

Cataracts are a clouding of the lens of the eyes, and among older people they can progress from a light fogging to blindness. About 20 million people in the world are blinded by cataracts, and more than a million people a year in the United States have operations to remove them.

But the study by the Wilmer Eye Institute at Johns Hopkins Medical Institutions showed that protective measures can cut down on the development of cataracts.

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“The good news is that you can reduce by 50% your exposure to (ultraviolet light) by wearing a hat with a brim,” said Dr. Hugh R. Taylor, co-author of the study.

Even more effective that a hat are sunglasses, because some glasses effectively block more than 95% of the damaging sunlight, call ultraviolet B.

It has long been suspected that heavy exposure to sunlight could cause cataracts, but the Johns Hopkins study, reported in the New England Journal of Medicine, offers the first conclusive evidence.

The researchers studied 838 watermen who had worked from a few years to all their lives crabbing and oystering on the bay. Between those who had been on the water for a few years and those who had worked for many years there was a 3.3-fold increase in cataracts.