I wear my suncontacts at night
Photochromic lenses that allow you to walk from inside to outside without putting on UV-filtering lenses have been around for decades. But the technology is just making its way to contacts.
The contact lens on the left contains photochromic dyes that darken in the presence of UV light.
(Credit: Institute for Bioengineering and Nanotechnology)Traditionally, these light-to-dark lenses have been constructed by coating a normal lens with a photochromic dye. When UV light hits the dye, the individual molecules expand, darkening the lens and absorbing light. Coating contacts, however, doesn't work so well.
So researchers at the Institute for Bioengineering and Nanotechnology in Singapore have laced contacts with a matrix on nano tunnels filled with these photochromic dyes. Not only has the team been successful in producing transition contacts; these contacts darken in the presence of UV light faster than standard lenses (just 10 to 20 seconds).
The researchers are now working on isolating the photochromic material to just the corneal region of your eye, granting you all of the UV filtering without turning your entire iris black.
But until they graft the timeless style of a Wayfarer onto my eyeball, I'll pass.
This story originally appeared on Gizmodo.
Contacts are already kind of expensive, I'd hate to see what these cost when they drop.
The problem: I where glasses with Transitions UV protection and they work great, but when I'm driving the UV protection is rendered useless because all the car windows are coated with UV protective film. I purposely purchased glasses with the removable tinted lenses just for the purposes of driving and having some eye shades.
Having Transitions contact lenses would be nice, but I could just put on a pair of sunglasses in the car.
- by TheAtomicSoul November 11, 2009 12:18 PM PST
- Why not release them as is, and release the updated non-iris covering ones later?
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