Display Technology

ePaper 2-3 times better for eyes, Harvard study finds

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March 14, 2023

E Ink Corporation has announced the results of a scientific study from Harvard University indicating that its ePaper solution is up to three times healthier for the eyes than standard LCD/LED displays, according to a press release.

The study compared the cellular effect of LCD displays with that of ePaper displays with three types of front lighting: cold-white, dark amber and E Ink's ComfortGaze front light. At the core of the study is ROS, or reactive oxidative species, an indicator of cellular stress; the study's key finding was that "When operating the devices in the same mode (day or night), cells accumulated ROS two to three times more slowly on exposure to frontlit electronic paper displays compared to backlit liquid crystal displays. With increasing ROS accumulation, mitochondrial morphology shifted from elongate interconnected features typically observed under normal conditions to rounded disconnected features associated with oxidative stress response."

The study indicates that ePaper of the type tested in the study could be two to three times less stressful on the eyes, on a cellular level, than standard LCD and LED displays, which emit blue light which, according to Harvard's Staying Healthy publication, can disrupt sleep and have other potentially negative effects: "Although it is environmentally friendly, blue light can affect your sleep and potentially cause disease. Until the advent of artificial lighting, the sun was the major source of lighting, and people spent their evenings in (relative) darkness. Now, in much of the world, evenings are illuminated, and we take our easy access to all those lumens pretty much for granted. But we may be paying a price for basking in all that light. At night, light throws the body's biological clock — the circadian rhythm — out of whack. Sleep suffers. Worse, research shows that it may contribute to the causation of cancer, diabetes, heart disease, and obesity."

The study was conducted by the Cellular Profiling Service Core of the T.H. Chan Harvard School of Public Health, and the full text has been made available in the Journal of the Society for Information Display.