Fashion

This Beauty Trend Is Bad For Your Eye Health

by Catie Keck

Find yourself pining for longer, thicker lashes? Think again: Your eyelashes grow to just the right length to serve their biological purpose (yes, there is one), and fake eyelashes may actually damage your eyesight. The pitfalls of adhesives and all the other stuff used to keep the things on your actual eye aside, forego the lashes themselves in favor of a more natural look and a significantly less arduous beauty routine (thanks, science).

According to a group of researchers led by David Hu at the Georgia Institute of Technology, in “a wide variety of mammals, eyelashes are always about one-third as long as the eye is wide, which, it turns out, is the ideal length for diverting airflow around the eye and reducing evaporation,” reports the New York Times. Also, they help keep gross airborne particles like dust from getting in your eye, and longer lashes may help filter that stuff directly to your eyeball (eesh).

Using an artificial rendering of shorter and longer eyelashes and a small wind-tunnel, researchers deduced that fake lashes — which artificially lengthen your lash-length — have a difficult time fulfilling their evolutionary purpose. “Our study demonstrates that eyelashes divert airflows, acting as a passive dust controlling system for the eyes,” says the study. “They reduce evaporation and particle deposition up to 50%, indicating the evolution of eyelashes may have played a role in reducing the frequency of endogenous blinks, which replenish and clean the tear film.”

Looks like an au naturale beauty regimen wins again.

Image: Vladimir Voronin /Fotolia