Preventing Eye Injuries in the Workplace

Category: Other

Fortunately, almost all eye injuries workers sustain in the workplace care preventable. The risk of work-related eye injuries is reduced with proper preventive strategies. However, this responsibility falls on both employees and employers. Provide Appropriate Eye Protection It is not enough to provide eye protection to workers; employers should provide eye protection appropriate for tasks. This requires knowing which job tasks require low, medium, and high-impact eye protection. Low-impact protection such as eyecup goggles, safety glasses, and face shields are appropriate for jobs that involve riveting, chipping and hammering a strap under tension. Medium-impact protection may be needed for tasks that involve grinding metals, brick cutting, wire handling and scaling and. Jobs that involve the use of nail guns and explosive power tools require high-impact protection that includes face shields and filters, as do tasks that involve handling chemicals. Ordinary eyewear such as sunglasses, contact lenses, and prescription glasses do not protect the eye adequately and are not considered appropriate eye safety aids in the workplace. In fact, contact lenses may even pose a risk of eye injury; for instance, if a chemical splashes into the eye, it may localize within the contact lens, concentrating the consequent eye injury.