Apple’s Glossy screens hazardous to your health? I call BS.

Queensland University is claiming that glossy screens are hazardous to your health; specifically “Apple ‘glass’ or high gloss monitor screens” are the culprits. The entire article is located at http://www.hrd.qut.edu.au/healthsafety/worksafely/highGloss.jsp

What the hell are they smoking down there in Australia? If glossy screens were really that bad I would think that doctors and researchers would be able to find evidence to corroborate the claim. In addition there would be lawsuits galore stating that glossy screens are causing health issues.

I did some research and could not find anything that was able to prove that having a glossy screen attached to your computer caused any issues excluding glare. I did find an article by the United States’ National Institute of Health, located at http://nihseniorhealth.gov/toolkit/toolkitfiles/html/QuickTips.html that mentions classrooms should avoid glossy screens because they may be difficult to read due to insufficient light reaching the eye. This make sense.

The second aspect of this ‘warning’ that annoys the piss out of me is the fact that they single out Apple. While I enjoy my Apple products, I’m not an Apple fanboy by any stretch of the imagination; if they screw up, I’ll be sure to say so. But why single out Apple when Windows-based computers also have glossy screens. I know for a fact that many manufacturers, I’m looking at you HP, tend to put glossy screens on more and more laptops.

Why wouldn’t these cause the same issues as the Apple glossy screens. The thing that this ‘warning’ (I think it’s just link-bait) doesn’t mention is that if a glossy screen is becoming an issue there are anti-glare filters that can be purchased rather inexpensively that will help mitigate the issue.

I think that this ‘article’, ‘warning’, or link-bait, whatever you want to call it, is just a load of crap that needs to have corroborating evidence before anybody takes this seriously.

I'm into everything technology related, particularly anything Apple related. I enjoy programming and tend to lean towards server-based technologies over client-based. You can contact me on twitter, via e-mail, or follow me on friendfeed.