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Your story didn’t surprise me. I doubted it the first time I saw it. When I read the original story (“Might night-lights blight sight?” SN: 5/29/99, p. 351), I said, “Wait a minute! Wouldn’t that mean that children raised north of the Arctic Circle should have unusually high levels of myopia?” Did the researchers involved ever think to check out this natural test population?

Hugh W. Thompson
Newark, N.J.

Studies of people in Alaska and Greenland show that myopia is more common in younger generations than older. Research hasn’t centered on the effect of day-night cycles, however, says Donald O. Mutti, an optometrist at Ohio State University. Some research suggests that the advent of public schooling among these people may account for the increased myopia incidence from the 1940s to 1960s. Scandinavian studies indicate that people there are no more myopic than in other developed countries, he says. A study is under way in Finland of myopia rates among people born in the summer versus winter. Results have not yet been published. –N. Seppa