• News
    • Tech News
    • AI
  • Gadgets
    • Apple
    • iPhone
  • Gaming
    • Playstation
    • Xbox
  • Science
    • News
    • Space
  • Streaming
    • Netflix
  • Vehicles
    • Car News
  • Social Media
    • WhatsApp
    • YouTube
  • Advertise
  • Terms
  • Privacy & Cookies
  • LADbible Group
  • LADbible
  • UNILAD
  • SPORTbible
  • GAMINGbible
  • Tyla
  • FOODbible
  • License Our Content
  • About Us & Contact
  • Jobs
  • Latest
  • Topics A-Z
  • Authors
Facebook
Instagram
X
TikTok
Snapchat
WhatsApp
Submit Your Content
Terrifying little-known reason why climate change is threatening eye health

Home> Science

Published 11:55 6 May 2025 GMT+1

Terrifying little-known reason why climate change is threatening eye health

A sight for sore eyes

Ben Williams

Ben Williams

Featured Image Credit: Westend61 / Getty
Climate change
Health

Advert

Advert

Advert

If you thought climate change was just about rising sea levels, wildfires, and scorching heatwaves, think again — it's coming for your eyes too.

A growing number of scientists are warning that global warming is quietly damaging our vision, and it’s affecting people like Alka Kamble, a 55-year-old farmworker from Maharashtra, India, in real time.

Kamble spent decades toiling in fields under the harsh sun with no sunglasses or shade. In 2017, she noticed her vision becoming blurry but didn’t seek help.

Advert

She said, 'I couldn’t afford it, and neither did I have the time, as I had to work long hours to make ends meet.'

A senior man with cataracts (Getty Images)
A senior man with cataracts (Getty Images)

It wasn’t until she visited a free local eye clinic that she learned that she had cataracts. According to her doctor, long-term exposure to solar radiation was likely a major factor.

Kamble added: “The heat has become so unbearable that farmers are finding it difficult even to work for two hours in the field during summers”.

Advert

Cataracts – a clouding of the eye’s lens – affects around 94 million people globally, and while age and genetics are known culprits, research now shows that climate change is a growing threat to eye health.

Rising global temperatures are putting our eyes under more stress than ever. High heat increases the body’s temperature and can trigger heatstroke — a condition that disrupts vital processes throughout the body, including in the eyes.

Lucía Echevarría-Lucas, an ophthalmologist from Spain, explains how it works. Heatstroke messes with the eye’s natural defense systems, allowing damaging molecules called reactive oxygen species to build up.

These molecules attack the crystalline proteins in the lens. “Forming opacities that lead to cataracts,” she says.

Advert

Once those proteins are damaged, they can’t regenerate — meaning the longer you spend in extreme heat, the higher your risk of developing cataracts.

Echevarría-Lucas and her colleagues studied this over the course of a decade in southern Spain. They found that for every 1°C rise in annual maximum temperature, there were an extra 370.8 cases of cataracts per 100,000 people.

It gets worse. Increased UV radiation is also a major factor, and climate change is pushing those levels higher, too. Echevarría-Lucas adds: “UV radiation also generates reactive oxygen species that damage the eye lens, and can directly damage the DNA of lens cells”.

A woman protecting her eyes from the sun (Getty Images)
A woman protecting her eyes from the sun (Getty Images)

Advert

Other eye conditions linked to climate change include conjunctivitis (pinkeye), pterygium (tissue growth over the eye), and keratitis (corneal inflammation), according to a study by Yee Ling Wong, an ophthalmologist-in-training in the UK.

Another study in China found that when temperatures climbed above 28.7°C, the risk of conjunctivitis shot up by 16%.

And it’s not just the heat — climate-fueled droughts are also affecting nutrition and access to clean water, both crucial to eye health.

To fight back, experts recommend UV-blocking sunglasses, wide-brimmed hats, regular breaks for outdoor workers, and a diet rich in vitamins A, C, and E. Contact lenses designed to allow more oxygen to the cornea can also help reduce UV damage.

Advert

But the only real long-term fix? Reducing greenhouse gases and ozone-depleting chemicals.

“I never realised that the problem could get so severe by working in the fields,” Kamble says.

Now, experts say, we all need to open our eyes — before climate change shuts them for us.

  • Little-known reason why contact names on your iPhone are turning red
  • Horrifying study reveals extraordinary number of people who will die from climate change by 2050
  • Researchers warn we're at climate change 'tipping point' as planet heats up at a record pace
  • Scientists make horrifying prediction of exactly 'how many people will die from climate change' by 2099

Choose your content:

3 hours ago
5 hours ago
7 hours ago
  • 3 hours ago

    World's biggest lithium reservoir with $1,500,000,000,000,000 worth of the precious metal hiding in supervolcano

    This could turn the US into a leading global supplier of the valuable metal

    Science
  • 3 hours ago

    Earth could be hit today by insane 600,000 mile-wide solar eruption that triggers extreme geomagnetic storm

    Scientists are warning that this could cause disruptions on Earth

    Science
  • 5 hours ago

    Scientists reveal people really can die from a broken heart but one gender is more like to suffer from it

    Heartbreak is now considered an actual health condition, and it can actually kill you

    Science
  • 7 hours ago

    Scientists build dystopian 32ft ‘black box’ solely designed to record the end of civilization

    It's the end of the world as we know it

    Science