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.
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.'
Advert
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”.
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.
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”.
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.
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.