Be Careful of Blue Light – Damage Increases With Age

upstart writes:

Sources of blue light include the sun, digital screens, and electronic devices:

According to a recent study from Oregon State University, the harmful consequences of daily, lifetime exposure to the blue light emitted by phones, computers, and home lighting become worse as people age.

The common fruit fly, Drosophila melanogaster, was used in the research, which was recently published in Nature Partner Journals Aging. Drosophila melanogaster is a useful model organism because it shares cellular and developmental mechanisms with humans and other animals.

A team led by Jaga Giebultowicz, a scientist at the OSU College of Science who specializes in biological clocks, studied the survival rate of flies maintained in darkness and then transferred to an environment of continual blue light from light-emitting diodes, or LEDs, at increasingly older ages.

[...] "The novel aspect of this new study is showing that chronic exposure to blue light can impair energy-producing pathways even in cells that are not specialized in sensing light," Giebultowicz said. "We determined that specific reactions in mitochondria were dramatically reduced by blue light, while other reactions were decreased by age independent of blue light. You can think of it as blue light exposure adding insult to injury in aging flies."

Read more of this story at SoylentNews.