Will The Solar Eclipse Harm Your Health?

On Monday, August 21, 2017, a total solar eclipse will be visible within a band across the entire United States but this eclipse will only be visible in other countries as a partial eclipse. While there's no harm in being outdoors during a solar eclipse, you have got to be cautious about a few things. Make sure that if you wish to see the eclipse, you use eclipse glasses and not any other sunglasses, as eclipse glasses are prescribed to certain safety standards.

On this solar eclipse, here are a few things you need to be cautious about because an eclipse can harm your health partially.

1. Be cautious! Solar eclipse can cause retinal damage

Never look at the sun with a naked eye because it might result in partial loss of vision and retinal damage. Don't ignore the warnings as one ecstatic moment might affect your health severely. You can look at the sun during the time of totality when will sun will be completely covered by the moon. It will be for a brief interval of two minutes but you have got to be cautious and wear eclipse glasses to prevent damage. According to NASA, "Being a million times fainter than the light from the sun itself, there is nothing in the coronal light that could cross 150 million kilometers of space, penetrate our dense atmosphere, and cause blindness."
 
2. Pregnant women are safe during an eclipse

There are superstitions that state that during an eclipse, a pregnant woman should not go out as it might affect the baby. The baby might have deformed body parts and face. Shafia Bhutto, an obstetrician-gynecologist at Mercy Hospital in St. Louis told a news organization that, "There is nothing that will happen to your unborn baby during an eclipse because they are in your uterus." Superstition has a different interpretation whereas Science has a different interpretation to the impact of solar eclipse on pregnant women.
3. Solar eclipse will not poison the food you eat

If superstitions are to be believed, the sun's rays during an eclipse will poison the food you eat. But, according to NASA, if that were the case, the same radiations would destroy the food in your pantry, or crops in the field. NASA stated that it's the colour of the rays that scare people and they come up with frightening stories related to it.

NASA, further states, that there is no physical relationship between a total solar eclipse and your health. Astrologers come up with their interpretations trying to foretell future during an eclipse but all of that is just superstition.

Be cautious but don't adhere to superstitions this solar eclipse.