A woman from Brooklyn, New York, USA who squinted at the 2017 solar eclipse for 10 seconds without proper eye protection is now warning others of the “irreversible eye damage” she suffered including a blind spot in the middle of her left iris.
Bridget Kyeremateng, 29, said that she looked up at the spectacle without any eye protection after being unable to secure a pair of protective glasses, thinking “a couple of seconds wouldn’t do anything.
She made the revelation on Monday, April 8, just hours before a solar eclipse was expected to be partially visible in the Big Apple.
She said she felt fine the rest of the day but woke up the next morning unable to read the words on her phone screen out of her left eye, the same eye she stared at the eclipse with.
Kyeremateng described “freaking out” when she also could barely make out anything beyond “white dots just floating around” when looking out of her left eye.
Kyeremateng immediately visited the eye doctor, where she eventually learned that her retina was not damaged but that there was some distortion to her vision as a result of the sun damage.
The solar eclipse took place Monday, April 8, blocking the sun for over 180 million people in its path. It moved fro from Mexico’s Pacific Coast across North America, hitting 15 US states and pulling itself all the way to the coast of Newfoundland, Canada.
