9 April 2024
TOPEKA (KSNT) – It’s a rising topic on Google Trends in Kansas: “why do my eyes hurt” after the solar eclipse?
Yesterday Kansas was plunged into partial darkness after a solar eclipse. Looking at the sun – during an eclipse or any other time – without certified viewing glasses can cause permanent eye damage.
“The lenses of your eye … can concentrate the rays of the sun so strongly as to cause an immediate burn. The same effect will occur in the retina and create essentially a hole in your vision, which sometimes can be permanent,” explained Dr. Russell Van Gelder with the American Academy of Ophthalmology.
If you didn’t listen to the experts’ advice, you may suffer from solar eye damage, or solar retinopathy.
On April 8, the solar eclipse cast shade across the Sunflower State around 2 p.m. The first Google searches for ‘why do my eyes hurt’ in Kansas started around 2:45 p.m. As of 8 a.m. on Tuesday, April 9, there have been 356 search queries for ‘why do my eyes hurt’ in Kansas.
According to Google Trends, most of the searches came from the Kansas City metro area followed by the Wichita-Hutchinson area. The Kansas City area saw at least 100 searches and the Wichita-Hutchinson area saw at least 76 searches.
Similar search queries included solar eye injuries like ‘photic retinopathy’ with more than 200 searches, ‘headache after eclipse’ with 38 searches and ‘accidentally looked at eclipse’ with 30 searches.
In mild cases of solar eye damage, you may experience watery eyes, headaches and sensitivity to light. In more serious cases, symptoms include blurry vision, eye pain, a blind spot in vision, straight lines appearing warped and rounded, or certain objects appearing smaller than they really are.
If you think you may have solar retinopathy, you should make an appointment with an ophthalmologist.
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