A pharmacist’s complaint about a “misleading” Boots contact lens advert has led to the multiple being rapped by the advertising regulator.

The Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) upheld the complaint, that an advert claiming that Boots Protect Plus Blue lenses protect against “harmful” blue light could not be substantiated, the regulator announced yesterday (October 28).

Boots Opticians said it is “disappointed” that ASA did not accept the clinical evidence it provided to support the advert’s claims. “We will continue to work with our lens manufacturer to provide further evidence for their effectiveness in the future,” it told C+D.

The advert, which appeared in the national press in January, claimed that “many modern gadgets...give off a certain kind of blue light that can cause your retinal cells to deteriorate over time”, ASA said.

The advert also claimed that Boots Protect Plus Blue lenses can “help protect eyes from harmful blue light, reducing damage to retinal cells”, the regulator said.

Boots Opticians had submitted “a study, a literature review, several trade publications and a reference to a European Commission document” to support its claim that a type of blue light has a “negative effect on the eye”, ASA noted.

Less harmful than sunlight

The regulator acknowledged that light from mobile phones, tablets and computer screens can emit harmful blue light, but said it understands “that the overall output of harmful light from those sources is significantly below that of sunlight”.

The study Boots Opticians had provided to support its claims about the harmful effects of light on the eye only made conclusions about sunlight exposure, rather than the “specific wavelength of harmful blue light”, ASA stressed.

“We therefore considered that the study...was not sufficient to substantiate the claims”, it said.

The evidence provided by Boots Opticians about the protective quality of its lenses also showed that they filtered out a “modest” 20% of blue light, ASA said. The multiple did not show how this would lead to a “significant reduction of retinal damage”, the regulator said.

ASA told Boots Opticians that the advert “must not appear again in its current form”. It also told the multiple “not to make claims that blue light causes retinal damage or that their Protect Plus Lenses filter out a meaningful amount of harmful light” without providing “adequate substantiation”. 

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