Three optometrist associations warned people to be careful when wearing special-effect or coloured contact lenses for Halloween because they could affect their vision. Edmond Tang/ China Daily

'The more color the contacts contain, the less oxygen the eye can receive'

With Halloween just round the corner, optometrists have warned against wearing color contact lenses without consulting a specialist. A lack of circumspection, they have insisted, could result in severe eye afflictions, including blindness.

The dreamy, wider-than-life-eyes and doll-like looks of celebrities have induced many teenage girls and young women to copy and wear circle lenses, or colored contacts, which make the eyes appear larger because they cover not just the iris, as normal lenses do, but also parts of the whites.

These circle lenses, which have captured the mainstream market in Japan, Singapore and South Korea, are turning up in Hong Kong secondary schools and on college campuses.

A survey conducted by the Hong Kong Society of Professional Optometrists (HKSPO), the Hong Kong Optometric Association and the Hong Kong Association of Private Practice Optometrists discovered that 29 percent of Form One to Form Seven girl students wear contact lenses and among them 46 percent use decorative lenses.

The lenses are widely available online and in the so-called "consignment shops".

Following an undercover investigation carried out in mid-October in 15 consignment and eight online shops, it was discovered that people can buy color contact lenses without prescription from a professional optometrist.

"The shop owners claim that color contact lenses are wearable overnight. This is not true," said Rufina Chan, chairman of the HKSPO. She said color contacts can only be worn for four to six hours at the most.

Color tints are deeper, opaque tints that can change your eye color completely. Usually they are made of patterns of solid colors. "The more color the contacts contain, the less oxygen the eyes can receive through them," Chan added.

She warned that ill-fitting contact lenses could deprive the eye of oxygen and cause serious vision problems and even blindness.

The danger lies in inappropriate application, not quite in wearing color lenses, said Vincent Chui, associate consultant optometrist at Hong Kong Polytechnic University. "With proper assessment, instructions and follow-ups by a certified optometrist, people can wear color lenses safely," he said.

Optometrists have to follow a strict code of practice to carry out their work. However, at present, it is not illegal for shops to sell decorative lenses without papers from optometrists. Chan denounced the slow the progress of updating legislation. "Over the past few years, we have been urging the government to take steps and make sure contact lenses are sold only on the prescriptions from certified optometrists. But there is no response so far," Chan said.

Cathy Lau, 28, owns a few pairs of color contact lenses and wears them whenever she is out partying with her peers. "I feel more confident with those contacts on because they make my eyes appear bigger and more attractive," she said. But now she is scared. She said she would stop wearing such fancy lenses in the future. "Our eyes are precious. I am not going to let them get damaged."

China Daily

(HK Edition 10/27/2010 page1)