Is it harmful to stare at the sun for half an hour with your eyes closed?!


Question: Is it harmful to stare at the sun for half an hour with your eyes closed?
What percentage of UV light do our eyelids block? If less than 100%, that means sunbathers are at greater risk of getting cataracts and other eye damage, not to mention skin cancer. I'm surprised there is no public service warning about this like there is against smoking and saturated fat and such. Even with eyes closed, the sun is very very bright and that can't be good for you. Sure sunglasses will help, but nobody wants to wear sunglasses while sunbathing because you wind up getting those racoon eyes... the skin under the sunglasses won't tan and it'll stand out against the rest of your face.

Answers:

[Bryce],
First:
When you close your eyes, most people's eyes actually rotate back up and diverge slightly out.. so the sun's rays won't actually go directly into the pupil.

Second:
If enough UV got through the thin eyelid skin (there is a hard cartilage plate called Tarsal Plate under the eyelids that will surely block all your UV), to get to the eyes to give you cataracts, I"m sure your eyelids will be so cancerous already, and you're probably under Chemo/Radio treatment for those cancers to save your life... rather than worrying about your vision.

It's like - you're worried about the bleed at a snake bite instead of the poison that's travelling to your heart.



You can't be staring at the sun if your eyes are closed.

When the eyes are closed, the UV is blocked from getting into your eyes, but the lids are tender skin and easily prone to getting weird growths from sun exposure like that.

Optician



Maybe you will get sunburn.



As the other answerer said, your eyelids block the UV from getting to your eyes even though a wee bit of visible light can make it through.

They used to make special "glasses" to use when sunbathing, they were small, oval, opaque plastic, sat close to the eyes and only covered just the area of your eyelids (sort of like the glasses for tanning beds). By the way, sitting out and baking in the sun for hours on end (and the tanning beds) is bad for all of your skin, not just eyelids, and the practice has been frowned on by doctors for some time, but just like smoking, drinking, junk food, etc, people still do it anyway!




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