Sliced Bread

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Sliced Bread Presents: Blue Light Filtering Glasses

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Blue Light Filtering Glasses

BBC Radio 4 - Sliced Bread, Blue Light Filtering Glasses

Are claims that they can protect our eyes and improve sleep true? Or just short sighted?

Hyped as an antidote for screen time, brands say their specs can help prevent tired eyes, poor sleep and potentially, a more worrying long term disease. How true are those claims?

According to some  businesses,  the laptop, phone and TV screens we use every day are causing us big problems.  

They claim these devices emit concentrations of "harmful blue light" which leaves us with tired eyes and poor sleep.  One firm goes even further by suggesting this may contribute to a worrying long term condition,  macular degeneration which leaves you with a permanent black hole in the centre of your vision.

Their solution? A pair of trendy looking spectacles which claim to filter out this blue light. 

Listener, Sophie spends roughly 12 hours a day at a screen of some sort.  
She bought a pair but isn't sure if they work. So she's asked Greg to look into them and find out.  

We get answers from two leading lights in the science of our eyes. Professor John O'Hagan has been a public health scientist for 46 years and is Visiting Professor in Laser and Optical Radiation Safety at Loughborough University. 

Greg also meets sleep expert Russell Foster, professor of Circadian Neuroscience at the University of Oxford who's been researching body clocks for 38 years. 

We put the evidence directly to Dhruvin Patel. He's the boss of one of the largest blue light filtering brands, Ocushield which turned over £2m last year.

How does he respond? And will Sophie keep using her trendy specs?  

This series,  we’re testing your suggested wonder-products. Seen an ad, trend or fad and wonder if there's any evidence to back up the claim?  Tell us! Drop us an line to sliced.bread@bbc.co.uk .   

Presenter: Greg Foot
Producer: Julian Paszkiewicz

Sliced Bread Presents

Intelligent speech, the most insightful journalism, the wittiest comedy, the most fascinating features and the most compelling drama and readings anywhere in UK radio.

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Factual: Health & Wellbeing

Factual: Science & Nature

Factual: Science & Nature: Science & Technology

While Sliced Bread takes a break, we serve up... Toast.

While Sliced Bread takes a break, we serve up... Toast. Sean Farrington examines the spectacular failures of wonder products and businesses which had promised so much.

While Sliced Bread takes a break we serve up... Toast. A study of the spectacular failures of brands which had promised so much to consumers.    

In each episode, the presenter and BBC business journalist, Sean Farrington, examines one big idea. What did it promise? Why did people back it? Why did they get burnt?  

Some of the world's most successful businesses have also brought us some of the world's most remarkable failures. So, what led them to be toast? And what can we learn from their stories today? 

Sean unpicks all the early optimism, hype and ambition. He learns about the tremendous success of a brand before hearing how it faltered, with help from expert commentators and people who were directly involved. How do they view things now and what, if anything, could have been done differently? 

The self-made millionaire and serial entrepreneur, Sam White, is alongside him, analysing the missteps that changed a brand's fortunes and reaching her own, often instructive, conclusions.  

From big tech to high street retail and, of course, food, Toast tackles the business ideas that, one way or another, ended up cooked. 

Sliced Bread returns for a new batch of investigations in February. In the new series, Greg Foot will investigate more of the latest so-called wonder products to find out whether they really are the best thing since sliced bread. In the meantime, Toast is available in the Sliced Bread feed on BBC Sounds.

Toast is a BBC Audio North production for BBC Radio 4.

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