RSS | 
Twitter
| 
Be a fan!
Doctor says color-blindness affects 5 to 8 percent of men
He probably can't help it because the inability to correctly see colors is in his genes. And, like many of his other faults, you can blame his mother.
Find 12 men and chances are, at least one of them is color-blind. Sometimes women are color-blind, but not as frequently.
According to Dr. Thomas D'Orazio, an ophthalmologist with Crossroads Eye Care Associates in McMurray, 5 to 8 percent of men are color-blind while only about one-half of 1 percent of women suffer from a color deficiency.
Rate This Story:
1 the lowest - 5 the highest
Current rating:
It's not a disease. It's not life-threatening and it's certainly not fatal.
Other than not being able to tell certain colors and hues apart, there is no other medical pathology connected to color-blindness, D'Orazio said.
Yes, there are tests to determine if someone is color-blind, the main ones being the Ishihara or Farnsworth Hue tests, where numbers are hidden in a series of colored dots.
No, there is no cure except to restrict clothing purchases to one color, preferably selected by someone who can see colors correctly.
The inability to distinguish certain colors is inherited on the X-chromosome. Women have two copies of the chromosome and men have just one. It's usually passed from mother to son at the moment of conception.
Harry Funk, 46, Observer-Reporter online editor, discovered he was color-blind in elementary school when a nurse administered a test.
"You were supposed to see numbers, and everyone was able to except for me and my best friend," he recalled. "It was quite a shock at the time."
His color deficiencies are in the red and green color families, and he admits that he usually asks his wife, Tammy, to select his clothes to make sure they're color-coordinated on workdays.
D'Orazio said the most common form of color-blindness is the X-link with a red-green deficiency. Some can see different shades of both colors, and some can't see anything but gray. Others have difficulty in distinguishing between certain hues of the same color.
"There are three pigment cones (in the eye) - red, green and blue - and those three are able to collectively discern all the colors we're able to see. When there is an abnormality in balance or quantity, that's when we have trouble distinguishing colors," D'Orazio said.
Parents are not able to detect color-blindness in children for many years, he said, unless it's severe and the child is totally unable to see any colors.
There's no reason to test for the deficiency unless a driver has trouble discerning whether the traffic signal is red or green.
"Obviously, if someone is aspiring to be an artist or designer, it could determine their choice in careers. But most color-blind patients adjust quite well and function well in our society," D'Orazio said.
