St. Jerome, Quebec school forced to discard thousands of fake solar eclipse glasses

A school in Saint-Jerome, Quebec had to get rid of lots of fake solar eclipse glasses that they bought on Amazon.

The Riviere-du-Nord school services center said that 3,700 glasses bought by Ecole Polyvalente Sainte-Jerome had to be thrown away because some of them were not the same as the others. Students and teachers noticed this.

“There were some real ones,” said Nadyne Brochu, who works at the service center. “In the glasses we got, when the school started giving them out to students, teachers saw that some glasses were not as clear as others. ” When they were unsure, they did some research and found out that the supplier’s product had been copied.

Brochu said the school called the Montreal Science Centre and decided to throw away the glasses to make sure no one gets hurt from wearing them.

Brochy said it was impossible to check every pair of glasses received, so they made the decision stronger.

The American Astronomical Society (AAS) said in March that fake glasses are made by one company with a fake name and design printed on them.

We used to only know about fake eclipse glasses made in China with a different brand printed on them. American Paper Optics, also known as APO, made these glasses, according to the AAS website. APO is a big organization in the United States. The company that makes safe solar viewers puts its name and address on its eclipse glasses. But the fake Chinese products have the company’s name but not its address.

The AAS says that while the glasses are fake, they seem to be okay to use.

After finding more fake items, the AAS said it’s hard to tell the difference between the fake ones and the real ones.

Rick Fienberg, the person in charge of the AAS Solar Eclipse Task Force, said that solar filters are at least 1,000 times darker than regular sunglasses.

He said it’s easy to know if they’re not safe.

“Before April 8th, wear them inside and look at things,” he said. “You should not be able to see much through them, except maybe very bright lights, which will look very dim through the glasses. ” If you can see things like furniture or pictures on the wall, your glasses aren’t dark enough for looking at the sun.

Additional tests involve wearing the glasses outside on a sunny day and looking around. You shouldn’t be able to see anything other than the sun’s faint reflection on a shiny surface like a puddle. Next, stare at the sun and you will see a sharp-edged, round shape that is “pleasantly bright. ”

The AAS said that if the glasses pass all three tests, then they are okay.

St can be rewritten as “saint” or “saintly. ” Jerome school used $2,394 to buy glasses. They won’t be able to buy new ones for the students because they need them quickly.