Very few people think of smoking and eye health. More often than not, their eyes never come into the equation. Smokers may wonder if their heart and lungs are becoming damaged, but not their eyes. Why would they? When was the last time you heard that smoking was bad for your eye health? I don't think I've ever read or heard that message.
Nevertheless, it's true. Smoking does have a causal relationship on eye health outcome. Some eye problems are well known and include age-related macular degeneration and cataracts. Imagine some kid in his late teens starting smoking to fit in with some group or just to rebel, against who knows what. Now fast-forward 40 years. You see that same person with a white cane and seeing eye dog because his eyesight has failed him. Do you think he would have wanted to know about smoking and eye health earlier? I think he'd want to know. It may not have changed his mind, but it would certainly have given him pause at some point. Maybe he would have quit in his twenties or thirties? Who knows.
Many research studies have shown that most people are afraid of going blind; and they might be motivated to stop smoking if they knew that their future vision loss was related to their smoking habits. But like I said, how prevalent is the message that smoking may cause blindness? A study from Optometry - [2011 May;82(5):310-7] by Kennedy and others tries to answer this question. Their research, entitled "Knowledge about the relationship between smoking and blindness in Canada, the United States, the United Kingdom, and Australia: results from the International Tobacco Control Four-Country Project", looks at the smoking and eye health question in the four major western countries.
They randomly called approx. 11,000 total adult smokers to find out if they had heard the message about smoking causing blindness. They found that only a small proportion of adult smokers believed smoking actually caused blindness in Canada (13%), the United States (9.5)%, and the United Kingdom (9.7%). Surprisingly, over 47% of all adult smokers in Australia did believe that smoking could lead to blindness. Interestingly, Australia was the only country during this study period to have a national awareness campaign about smoking and it's relationship to eye health.
Obviously, the public needs this information so they can make better lifestyle and healthcare decisions. Knowing the relationship between smoking and eye health could be the motivation that many people need to make the decision to quit smoking.
