How to Pick the Right Sunglasses For You

Sunglasses have the practical effect of comforting your eyes from the glaring sun. This is also an important safety feature, as it greatly improves vision whilst driving (roads create terrible glare) and engaging in sporting activities.

Polarized lenses in sunglasses work by using vertically-aligned filters to block unwanted horizontally polarized light, ie. glare, whilst allowing the useful vertical light through to the eye. Non-polarized sunglasses only reduce the amount of visible light entering the eye, darkening the view. One in five sunglass lenses sold worldwide is a polarized lens, amounting to the estimated sale of 60 million polarized (or polarising) lenses.

Sunglasses also offer protection against the ultraviolet radiation which could cause cataracts and other damage to the eyes including degeneration of the macula, tissue growth on the white of the eye (pterygium) and skin cancer around the eyes if they are subjected to overexposure.

UV radiation has been classified into three types, UVA, UVB and UVC, but protection against UVC is not necessary as this type of ultraviolet is completely absorbed by oxygen and ozone in the atmosphere. It is important when buying sunglasses to make sure they are designed to block 99 to 100% of UV Radiation.