An estimated 215 million Americans were exposed to the 2017 solar eclipse. How many of them may have suffered temporary eye damage?
Hold on tight, tie your hats, prepare to shake.
Less than a hundred 1.
If we round up to 100 “victims”, that is 0.000047% of Americans exposed to the 2017 eclipse who would have suffered temporary damage to their eyes. I emphasize the word “temporary”, meaning that their vision has returned to normal for the vast majority. Cases of permanent damage are still rare: the scientific journal Nature noticed it in 19992.
It is not your humble servant who is making these observations. He is one of the world’s great experts on the eye and eclipses, I named him Dr B. Ralph Chou3, graduate in astronomy AND optometry, crazy about eclipses. The Dr Chou, based in Ottawa, is professor emeritus of optometry at the University of Waterloo. He helped create an ISO standard for solar observation equipment. He has authored scientific articles on eye safety in the context of a solar eclipse.
It was Marie-Eve Naud, astrophysicist from the University of Montreal, fan of eclipses and science communicator, who pointed me towards the work of Dr Chou and an interview he gave to Quebec Sciencewhich can be read here 4.
I summarize the crumbs of wisdom of world expert Chou: looking at the sun is always “risky”, eclipse or not. If you look at the sun for less than 5 seconds, the risk of injury is limited. If you want to look at the sun during the eclipse, you must do so with glasses of the ISO 12 312-2 standard, designed by Professor Chou. We can also create a completely safe projection mechanism with cardboard, explained by the same B. Ralph Chou on the YouTube channel of the Canadian Optometric Association5.
The risks are therefore microscopic, but less than two weeks before this formidable cosmic event that is an eclipse (Quebec is in the thin band where the eclipse will be total, a great stroke of luck), there is in our half – countries a phenomenon called a school eclipse, by which judgment leaves.
Our schools, our school service centers and the Ministry of Education have become bogged down in this school eclipse by an excessive concern for safety for the eye health of children (in view of the risks), on April 8.
Schools and school service centers first declared educational days to protect children’s eyes. Others have opted to confine students to school gymnasiums. Some managements have decided to close the window curtains or board them up with cardboard.
These absolutely catastrophic precautions have earned school administrators a deluge of criticism. A solar eclipse, an extremely rare event, is a golden opportunity to introduce children to the beauty of our universe… And to science. Not another (another) opportunity to overprotect them.
Recently, several schools had therefore backed down, decided to take their own gas and no longer succumb to panic. The school environment had regained a certain zenitude…
Until Monday.
On Monday, we learned that a memo from the Ministry of Education brought panic back to schools with a redundant reminder of safety instructions. Schools therefore decided to turn around and not take advantage of the eclipse. Minister Drainville may have corrected the course of his officials: panic had returned to the schools.
I come back to this percentage of Americans exposed to the 2017 eclipse and who were temporarily injured in the eyes: 0.000047%…
If we take this percentage and extrapolate to the entire Canadian population (40 million people), 18.6 Canadians would be likely to be temporarily injured in the eyes according to the calculations that astrophysicist Naud made for Me6.
As Quebec accounts for approximately 21.5% of the Canadian population, this means that the number of Quebecers who could be injured in the eyes by looking at the sun for too long on April 8 is… 3.9.
In short, the thinkers of Quebec education are failing because of an absolutely microscopic risk of eye injury.
Monday on the radio, at the start of the show, I interviewed astrophysicist Naud to address this security delirium relaunched by the Ministry of Education. And at the end of the show, I interviewed Éléonore Bernier-Hamel, college professor, literature teacher.
You are probably wondering why I am talking about CEGEP literature in a column on the April 8 eclipse. Follow the leader !
Professor Bernier-Hamel told me how the young people in her class are struggling with French: they still have trouble distinguishing verbs that end in ER or É, it is not uncommon to read in their copies temp rather than time, omagage rather thantribute And knows rather than It is…
All this after 12 years of primary and secondary schooling, under the aegis of wizards from the Quebec Ministry of Education. The Quebec model has its meyeur.
Memo to Department of Education Geniuses: When You Can Produce High School Graduates Who Can Write time with an S, we will listen to you for the management of a solar eclipse. In the meantime, focus on your main task.
And, finally, I have a free idea for the government to prepare for the next eclipse: why not create an Agency?
I would welcome (!) the creation of a “risk management agency linked to total or partial eclipses of the Sun in Quebec”, AGRLETTSQ.
Knows fashionable agencies, in Quebec…
That, or you entrust the mandate to the Caisse de dépôt.
1. Read the article by Sky and Telescope
2. Read the article by Nature
3. Read the article on eye safety in the context of a solar eclipse of the Dr Cabbage
4. Read the article by Quebec science
5. Watch the video broadcast on YouTube
6. Clarification: the eclipse will be visible across the country, mainly partially and completely in a thin band, from the Maritimes to southern Ontario via southern Quebec.
reference: www.lapresse.ca