Use Light To Assist Your Sight

Bay of Plenty Beacon, Volume 13, Issue 70, 28 March 1949, Page 8

Use Light To Assist Your Sight

AVOID EYESTRAIN

(By the Department of Health)

By “good lighting” is meant lighting that is both ample for the tasks on which we are engaged, and of a kind to produce an agreeable background to our activities. Then there’s no effort in using our eyes, and hence no eyestrain.

Check oyer your lighting arrangements. You can probably do without some lights if others were less shaded, or better directed. You may need a combination of general lighting to illuminate the whole area, with localised illumination for reading or sewing, or at machines in factories. Do see that the light is falling where you want it most, so that no matter what you’re doing, you avoid any sense of eyestrain. To see clearly the eye has to adjust its focus according to the distance of the object to be seen. Correct focussing makes the object stand out sharp, and clear, other things in the background further away, or nearer at hand,. being indistinct and blurring. The eye does this focussing by pulling on the lens and altering its curvature. The small muscles that do this are working at high pressure.

This accommodation business is automatic and without conscious effort. Other little muscles bring both eyes converging on the object to give single vision. As you do fine work or read or look at small objects your accommodation and convergence eye muscles are going “all out.” They can’t keep it up too long without getting tired. So one thing to do is to have little eye rests. Look into the distance frequently, relaxing the eye muscles. Another thing is to be sure of enough light and light falling from the right direction to avoid shadows on thp actual' working area.

If there’s insufficient light more focussing and convergence has to be done, and .feelings of weariness, nervousness and headache, are nature’s way of telling you the little eye muscles are overworking. . L ' ’ 1 "