Smoking more than 20 cigarettes a day can damage vision according to a new study. Conducted by a Rutgers researcher, the research was published in the journal Psychiatry Research. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 34.3 million adults in the United States alone currently smoke cigarettes and that more than 16 million live with a smoking-related disease, many of which affect the cardiovascular system.
For the purpose of the study 71 healthy people who smoked less than 15 cigarettes in their lives and 63 people who smoked more than 20 cigarettes a day and were diagnosed with tobacco addiction and reported no attempts to stop smoking were observed. The participants were between the ages of 25 and 45 and had a normal or corrected-to-normal vision as measured by standard visual acuity charts.
The research team compared how participants discriminated contrast levels (subtle differences in shading) and colours while seated 59 inches from a 19-inch cathode-ray tube monitor that displayed stimuli while researchers monitored both eyes simultaneously.
Findings saw significant changes in the smokers’ red-green and blue-yellow colour vision, which suggests that consuming substances with neurotoxic chemicals may cause overall colour vision loss. They also found that heavy smokers had a reduced ability to discriminate contrasts and colours when compared to the non-smokers.
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.
As far as we’re concerned, we just found another reason to not smoke!
