Prisma Health doctors stress eye safety during April 8th’s solar eclipse

COLUMBIA, SC (WOLO) —  On Monday, April 8th, a total solar eclipse will cross North America, passing over Mexico, the United States, and Canada.

It’s been dubbed “The Great North American Eclipse.”

According to Dr. Grant Brown, Pediatric Optician, South Carolinians will experience a partial eclipse from around 1:48 pm to 4:27 pm — with about 15 to 18 percent of the sun remaining visible.

That’s plenty of sunlight though, he says, to cause lasting damage to your vision without proper eyewear.

“It’s safe to go outside and it will be awesome to view the eclipse — with the proper equipment, but only with the proper equipment. If you’re going to look at the sun, even when it’s mostly occluded, you still need the proper vision equipment to protect your eyes,” says Brown.

The doctors stress that sunglasses are not adequate protection.

Reputable retailers like Target, Ace Hardware, and Walmart will be selling protective eyewear, usually for around $2 a pair.

The glasses will have what’s called an ISO marking and will say “Eclipse Vision Glasses” on the packaging.

“These actually, when they’re measured, are 100,000 times darker than the darkest pair of sunglasses. That’s a lot,” says Brown.

Dr. Janette White, Pediatric Ophthalmologist, also stresses the dangers of not using adequate eyewear.

“First of all you don’t notice any pain. There are no pain fibers in the retina. So you’re getting this tremendous damage to your eyes if you’re looking at that sun unprotected, and you don’t even know it’s happening because it doesn’t hurt, but the damage can be profound. And then over the course of minutes to hours to even a few days, then the visual effects become apparent,” White says.

With children being at a greater risk for eye damage, NASA recommends letting the kids add a paper plate shield to the eyewear, modeled by Dr. Brown in the video above, to prevent them from looking around the edges.

For a link to the NASA project for kids, click here.

White recommends practicing with your kids indoors first.

“We’re gonna pretend this is the sun up here. Let’s put our glasses on, we look away, we put our glasses on. We look. We look away, we take them off. And I think if you prepare the kids and obviously keep a close eye on them, there’s no reason why they can’t view it safely,” White says.

They stress it is not safe to view an eclipse through a mirror, your cell phone, or a telescope without your protective eyewear.

And if you have glasses left over from our eclipse in 2017, only use them if they are in perfect condition. If not, the doctors say buy a new pair.