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CrowdScience: Why do bright lights make me sneeze?

Discussion & Talk

GettyImages-96616707_crop.jpg

03/06/2022 GMT

Why do bright lights make me sneeze?

BBC World Service - CrowdScience, Why do bright lights make me sneeze?

From sneezes and snot to saliva, we delve into the bodily fluids found in our faces.

Humans are mostly liquid but what’s it all doing? We find out why we have snot & if it’s bad to eat it, why light can cause sneezing & what saliva can tell us about our health

This week’s CrowdScience is dedicated to bodily fluids – and why humans spend so much time spraying them all over the place. From snot and vomit to sweat and sneezes, listeners have been positively drenching our inbox with queries. Now presenter Marnie Chesterton and a panel of unsqueamish expert guests prepare themselves to wade through… 

One listener has found that as he ages, bright light seems to make him sneeze more and more – with his current record sitting at 14 sneezes in a row. He’d like to know if light has the same effect on other people and why? 

Sticking with nasal fluids, another listener wants to know why she’s always reaching for a tissue to blow her endlessly dripping nose and yet her family seem to produce hardly any snot at all. Could it be because she moved from a hotter climate to a colder one? 

CrowdScience reveals the answers to these and other sticky questions… if you can find the stomach to listen. 

Produced by Melanie Brown
Contributors:
Jagdish Chaturvedi – ENT Surgeon
Åsmund Eikenes – Author
Prof. Lydia Bourouiba - Associate Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering, MIT
Rubiaya Hussain – PhD student, optics and photonics, ICFO

[Image: Woman sneezing. Credit: Getty Images]

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