Improving Blue Light EyeQ

According to The Vision Council, 65 percent of Americans report experiencing common symptoms of digital eyestrain, including neck and back pain, headache, blurred vision, and dry eyes. Only a fraction of those with symptoms link the effects with the cause or understand the role of blue light in what they are experiencing. Even Americans who know the connection between digital devices and eyestrain rarely understand that blue light is present in nature as well as in technology, so protective measures are as valuable to people who work outdoors as to employees who spend much of their day in front of a digital screen.

Digital eyestrain is irritating, painful and a productivity killer—no question. Blue light is a likely contributor, especially outdoors, as blue light from the sun scatters through the atmosphere and can cause glare, resulting in visual discomfort and fatigue. The sun, in fact, emits more than 100 times the intensity of electronic devices and screens, and, depending on time of day, 25 percent to 30 percent of outdoor light is blue light. So, education about blue light protection should address blockage outdoors as well as in.

Highlighting Eyewear That Offers Blue Light Protection

When explaining the need for blue light protection to employees, providing concrete examples of what's available in their benefits is critical to driving enrollment and satisfaction. Some of my go-to examples include the following:

• Transitions® lenses, covered through all of the top managed vision care plans, filter harmful blue light while blocking 100 percent of UV radiation. Indoors, the lenses filter harmful blue light emitted by artificial sources such as digital devices and LED lights. Outdoors, the lenses activate and darken to help provide even more protection from harmful blue light, intense glare and UV rays from the sun.

• Other lens options that help address blue light include Eyezen +, Essilor Smart Blue Filter, Blu Tech, and Coppertone Polarized.

There are also anti-reflective coatings, including Crizal Prevencia, Zeiss DuraVision Blue Protect, and Hoya Recharge. Ninety percent of employees polled in the Transitions Optical survey believe a vision plan is more competitive if it covers premium lens brands. A 2012 survey found an equal percentage agree it is important for their vision plan to include the latest lens technologies. Ensuring employers fully understand how their plans work and what's covered will have a significant impact on employee satisfaction with their vision offering.

A Growing Need

The blue light discussion will continue to grow louder. Digital device use is on the rise among millennials (who will make up half the workforce by 2020) and Generation Z (the first truly digital natives, already making up 20 million of the global workforce and anticipated to be 25 million by 2017). Their lives are intrinsically intertwined with their phones and computers, at work and in leisure time. Just look at the ready adoption of telemedicine by these segments of the population as well as their influence on our personal habits and vocabulary—they aren't the only ones binge watching television or using the term.

A significant portion of the workforce is also raising children whose exposure to blue light is even more acute. A study by the Kaiser Family Foundation found that children ages eight to 18 spend an average of 7.5 hours a day on a digital device.

In addition to digital strain, which causes a drop in productivity and interferes with visual acuity in people whose vision is otherwise fine, excess exposure to harmful blue light has been linked to macular degeneration, one of the most serious and devastating vision diseases. Macular degeneration is the leading cause of vision loss in adults over the age of 50, according to the National Eye Institute, and is currently incurable. Those with macular degeneration struggle with reading, driving a car, recognizing faces and colors, and the fine details of objects. Due to an aging population, scientists project that incidents of macular degeneration will soar to 6.3 million by 2030—epidemic proportions. The impact of blue light is expected to swell the numbers of Americans with the disease beyond what we would expect to see in a population with more older people, and to increase the incidence in people younger than age 50.

Since we're not going to work less, convince schools not to use the latest technology for engaging students, or abandon smartphones any time soon, it is important to recommend and provide education about vision benefits that can help finance the products in the market today. For instance, plans designed to cover the latest lens and coating technology sooner, as well as to make options that have been available longer more affordable to members who prioritize blue light protection. Moreover, blue light protection and blocking have been standard features of certain lenses for decades. Access to technology like this is one of the factors I consider when deciding which benefit plan to recommend to a client.