Sunlight and Age-Related Macular Degeneration

To the Editor.  —In a recent article in the Archives, West et al¹ concluded that in a large group of watermen there was no evidence of increased risk of age-related macular degeneration associated with accumulated UV exposure. They quoted experimental data collected by Ham et al² in Richmond (Va) as evidence of the vulnerability of the retina to UV radiation. We think the investigators should have looked for an association with visible light.In 1966, Noell et al³ convincingly showed that, after long-term exposure, rat retina could be severely damaged by visible light. In later studies, pigeons and monkeys were shown to exhibit a similar kind of damage after exposure to white light.⁴ The action spectrum for damage coincided with the absorption spectrum of the visual pigment rhodopsin, and it is, therefore, understandable that the type of light damage described by Noell et al does