Prevention of getting cataracts by radiation

What ways might be there to prevent astronauts and space tourists from getting cataracts?

They are caused by particles and UV-light that impact the lense of the eyes. Within the lense - according to www.wissenschaft.de - there are fiber-particles that are going to be substituted by stemcells if required. The radiation seems to cause failures of this substitution resulting in cataracts.

Might it be possible to move the process to the windows of spacecrafts and spacestations to prevent the radiation from reaching the human eyes? Windows containing fiber-particles and stemcells or something like them? The catarct of the windows could be removed by flowing water.

It's sounding very silly - it's just a thought.

Could a special kind of medicine be developed that can be dropped into the eyes?

What might be possible?



Dipl.-Volkswirt (bdvb) Augustin (Political Economist)

UV isn't a big problem, you just need the right window coating to take care of it.

Particles aren't a huge problem as long as you have air filters. Remember, the tears in your eye can handle a certain amount of particle matter.

Ionizing radiation, most especially X-rays and gamma rays, is a problem all over. It's not just the eyes, it's the DNA damage, the increased risk of cancer, etc.

Here the NASA article on it. Does not sound like it would be that easy. And I wonder a little bit, why they didn't use any protection yet - they take the health of their astronauts very serious normally. Might the be no sufficient coating and filters yet?



Dipl.-Volkswirt (bdvb) Augustin (Political Economist)

Alas, but the only way to effectively stop hard radiation is to put huge amounts of mass between the source and the subject. About a foot of solid lead works rather nicely, and lots and lots of heavy water (D2O), circulating throughout the outer hull, also tends to do well.

There is an article under www.wissenschaft.de about it today. It says that particles of the solar wind crossing the brain possibly case halluzinations there.

Scientists are supposing that there is a direct reation with the visual cortex.

There are experiments by and with astronauts at the ISS where also the direction is measured a particle comes from. They try to find a correlation this way.

The article refers to Livio Narici and his team at the National Institute of Nuclear Physics in Rome and to New Scientist ( newscientist.com/ ), 31st of May 2008, page 39.

The article also says that the phenomenen is called phosphenes.



Dipl.-Volkswirt (bdvb) Augustin (Political Economist)