GREENSBORO, N.C. — Everytime you head outside, there's a hidden danger: UV rays bouncing right into your eyes. Doctors say being exposed for just 15 minutes is enough to cause damage. And long term exposure could lead to cancer and loosing your vision.
Eye doctors say hands down the best way to protect yourself is by wearing sunglasses. But if you don't have a pair handy, there are some other options that you've might have heard about. So 2 Wants To Know recruited an expert to help us put them to the test.
"We can get skin cancers inside of our eyes," Doctor Anika Goodwin said.
Goodwin is so worried about UV rays, she bought her own UV detector. And we're using it to test if car windshields really block the harmful rays like some online posts claim.
Under the windshield there's a zero reading, meaning no UV rays are getting through. But Goodwin says most older cars only have protection on the windshield not on the other windows like the side and rear.
"Car manufacturers have not been made to do that. so you need to be extra careful," she said. "This is why you see people riding around when they have children in their car with the extra shade because you need that extra protection."
Some contact lens brands also market themselves as having UV protection.
"But a contact lens only covers a small part of the eye. and so those dangerous Uv rays can get in all around the contact lens and get to the back of the eye," Goodwin said. "So you still need a pair of sunglasses."
That's why we also used her little gizmo to test several pairs of sunglasses to see if they really protect you from UV rays. 2 Wants To Know is working on putting that together for you now, and we'll bring you the results next week. Like Ben Briscoe's page on Facebook, so you won't miss the sunglasses test.
