Rutgers University researchers say smoking more than 20 cigarettes a day can damage vision.
A study, published in Psychiatry Research, looked at how participants discriminated contrast levels (subtle differences in shading) and colours while seated 150 centimetres from a 19-inch cathode-ray tube monitor that displayed stimuli while researchers monitored both eyes simultaneously.
The findings indicated significant changes in the smokers’ red-green and blue-yellow colour vision, which the researchers said suggested consuming substances with neurotoxic chemicals, such as those in cigarettes, may cause overall colour vision loss. They also found the heavy smokers had a reduced ability to discriminate contrasts and colours when compared to the non-smokers.
“Cigarette smoke consists of numerous compounds that are harmful to health, and it has been linked to a reduction in the thickness of layers in the brain, and to brain lesions involving areas such as the frontal lobe, which plays a role in voluntary movement and control of thinking, and a decrease in activity in the area of the brain that processes vision,” said Rutgers behavioural health care research director Steven Silverstein. “Previous studies have pointed to long-term smoking as doubling the risk for age-related macular degeneration and as a factor causing lens yellowing and inflammation. Our results indicate that excessive use of cigarettes, or chronic exposure to their compounds, affects visual discrimination, supporting the existence of overall deficits in visual processing with tobacco addiction.”
He added the findings also suggest that research into visual processing impairments in other groups of people, such as those with schizophrenia who often smoke heavily, should take into account their smoking rate or independently examine smokers versus non-smokers.
