Eye safety;

Common Eye Safety Missteps

In ancient Greek mythology, the single greatest eye safety slip-up was to stare directly at Medusa, the saucy snake-tressed gorgon who would return your wandering eye by turning you into stone. On the opposite end of the timeline spectrum, the sophisticated technology of spacemen use impregnated gold eye shields to prevent their eyes from the harsh glare of the sun.

Unfortunately, neither of those disparate eye safety techniques apply to our modern everyday life. Additionally, occupational eye safety doesn’t help much—unless you happen to be a recreational welder. The eye safety solution? Most eye safety measures are merely pre-planned common sense precautions— sunglasses in extremely arid, dusty areas, etc. It’s essential to remember that children often need more help—most children don’t plan very far ahead of their actions, and more uncoordinated children can get a coat-hanger caught in their eyelids if you turn your back for a mere second. Simply avoid any situation where your naked eye is exposed to foreign particles. If you do get a foreign particle or chemical lodged in your eye, make sure to flush it profusely. It is entirely possible that a dry, scratched eye can result in permanent eye damage—individuals who don’t pay attention to eye safety and don’t treat their chronic dry eye can rapidly see their eyesight decline, to their detriment.

Ultraviolet Rays and Your Eye Safety Net

Everyone loves cheap sunglasses—they tend to be the best designer knockoffs bought off of random street-corner carts. Cheap sunglasses protect you from the glare, but eye safety wise do not protect you from harmful Ultraviolet rays. If you disregard sun eye safety, you could end up with a corneal abrasion or and could require laser eye surgery to prevent and hemorrhage of your vitreous gel (the gooey center of your eyeball).

Your best eye safety sun protection bet is to buy polarized sunglasses, which usually have both UV protection and ability to deflect glare. Their protection potential can be easily tested by layering two polarized lenses, one over the other. You can also lift polarized sunglasses up to a computer screen—you should see a scalloped rainbow-like design, similar to an oil and water puddle you might see on the street on a sunny day. Polarized sunglasses can be purchased at many gas stations—you just have to know where to look and how to test them! You won’t have to sacrifice your rakish fashion, either…

Elusive Eye Safety: Pet Clean-Up

It’s fine to let your small child play with the neighbor’s dog and rough house with feline and canine friends—it’s what animals do, and as long as your child isn’t injured, they’ll probably consider the dog or cat their biggest, furriest, and most unpredictable toy. The underlying eye safety danger is, you don’t know if strangers’ dogs and cats have been de-wormed. So, if you leave a child unattended playing in the mud where dogs and cats defecate, you have more than a smelly mess to worry about. Ringworm larvae of dogs and cats (as well as the threat of cattle ringworm larvae for the more rural setting) can cause blindness, as well as other health problems of these parasite’s larvae(they migrate to the liver and lungs, to ultimately impact the health of one’s intestines)-- Most people aren’t aware of this eye safety danger—and many also feel that they would be impervious to contact with animal dung—but, just keep in mind how dirty children get, how infrequently they can wash their hands, and also how often they absentmindedly rub their eyes.

Minor Corneal Injuries and Treatment

Corneal scratches can occur from flying dust particles, or in more extreme cases chronic eye dryness. Contact wearers (especially hard contact lenses) who inadvertently leave those lenses in for too long can also get a corneal abrasion, essentially a loss of the epithelial layer of the eye.

Many parts of our eyes are covered in epithelial layers--the retina has an epithelial layer that, if not properly treated, can accumulate yellow cellular mass and then incur macular degeneration. The epithelial layer of the cornea, like other epithelial layers, is only one cell layer thick--a delicate sheen, to be sure.

The good news is, flying dust particles, even finely ground gravel to the eyeball can be healed with antiobiotics to heal any infection that the foreign objects produced. If your corneal abrasion was due to contact lenses, one of the worst things you can do to set back healing is to return to you regular contact lens wearing routing—instead, you should wear your glasses to let your eyes breath in some oxygen. You can also wear special bandage contact lenses that allow oxygen into the eyes for a convenient eye safety healing process.

Don’t Flip Your Lid: Eyelid Flipping Can Lead to Eye Safety Complications

The major danger with flipping one’s eyelids is not the eye safety concern that you might put pressure on your cornea, but that your face could get stuck like that. Our mothers all warned us of this peril, but we turned a blind eye so to speak.

That might not be entirely true...your eyelids might not stick that way, but your common sense should! Consider these and more eye safety tips to help ensure that you’ll keep your vision unobstructed, and your eyes safe. For more eye safety and eye care advice, please call the number listed on this screen or use our convenient contact form today!