Safety Glasses With Readers.

OK, this is a little off-topic while still being on topic. Working in the emergency room created a sense of fear of owning/riding a motorcycle. I enjoyed biking, on and off the road, but getting onto the major roads with a motorcycle seriously concerned me.

I am riding a motorcycle, my first season, but I overcame my motorcycle phobias by taking steps to remain safe. First and foremost wearing the proper equipment( Beginner Motorcycle Protective Gear ).

FYI: This safety information is not medical advice.

Nice segway into my latest concerns.

I have taken care of too many people with eye injuries. Many are purely accidental, but most were preventable, especially in circumstances where equipment maintenance was occurring. Safety glasses are cheap; they are cheaper than an ER visit and way cheaper than losing an eye or two.  

My Eye Safety and Reading Glasses Stupidity.  

I use contacts for distance sight. They are needed for driving, watching tv, etc. The drawback of these contacts, they eliminate(yes, eliminate) my close-up vision. I have to use reading glasses to see close-up items when I am wearing my contacts.

Now I wear contacts that you can wear for days at a time and hate pulling them out and putting them back in. So I’ve become dependent upon reading glasses.

A while back, I was under my car, wearing my reading glasses, changing the oil. It was an easy maintenance operation. To save time, I even use a creepy crawler. I looked straight up, with the glasses seated on my face, and I managed to get something in my eye.  

It was painful, caused both my eyes to water up. I got out from under the car quickly, stumbled into the house, and rinsed my face. I used eye drops to help flush out what fell into my eye. I couldn’t see well enough to examine my own eyes.

I had to have a family member help me, and only when the pain started reducing I figured I washed out the item. My eye was red and very unhappy with me. This event was a painful lesson. Reading glasses are not safety glasses.

Are Reading Glasses Safety Glasses?

No. I knew this was true, but I continued using reading glasses as my only eye protection. Simple because I needed them for close-up work, and I am a lazy person at times.

Safety glasses are specially rated for impact and other protection, and more importantly, they cover the whole eye to limit injury from foreign bodies.

Reading glasses do not offer full eye coverage, and my readers are cheap dollar store versions, so they offer no safety rating.

Make Safety Glasses With Readers By Adding Side Shields?

I’ve seen these side shields that slip over the arms of the glasses. Look like clear horse blinders(oxymoron). Again, the addition of side shields does not change the protection rating of the original reading glasses, and there are significant gaps in coverage of the eyes. Do not take a shortcut like this with your eye safety.

What Eye Injuries I Recently Seen.

The event that leads to this post was not my stupidity but seeing copycat patients. Regular eyeglasses are not safety glasses. We discussed they do not cover the eye completely, and they also lack any safety rating.  

I recently took care of a patient who wore regular glasses, who took a faceful of chemicals. Machinery lubricants. He was working alone but was able to get to the wash sink to minimize the injury. I looked at his glasses, even with copious amounts of water; per the story, the glasses were covered with oil, both sides.

The underside appears to be splashed with oil from what struck the patient’s face. This event wasn’t good. I’ll end the details here.

What can we learn from this? Regular glasses(they have larger lenses typically) are not safety glasses. Simple readers(usually with smaller lens) are not safety glasses.

So what can we, who use reader, do?

Get Safety Glasses With Readers.

Starting a couple of years ago, we had other droplet pandemic fears before the most recent. I had a coworker flick blood into his eye while we were taking care of a patient. Because of events like this, I traded in my reading glasses for safety glasses with readers.

Because of my use of contacts, I am dependent on reading glasses. Medication tablets have small print. Difficult-stick patients have tiny, fragile veins, and I pride myself on one and done attempts at getting intravenous access.   

I clean my safety glasses frequently, and I have to say, I am amazed at how dirty something I wear on my face gets. I am glad recently, part of my daily work-wear is a surgical mask. I feel less exposed to tiny droplets my patients manage to send my way still.

Enough grossing some out, but I wanted to explain I’ve been wearing safety glasses with readers for years, and every day at work, I am reminded why.

Is Wearing Safety Glasses All Day Terrible For Your Eyes?

I am not making medical diagnoses or predictions and just pointing out the obvious and sharing my experiences. I can tell you; I safety glasses with readers for my 12+ hour shifts several times a week in the ER.

These safety glasses have been the difference of a mess case to a messy case requiring me to see occupational health for post-exposure screening.

However, let’s get back to the post’s point. Unless you are a professional mechanic or an awful home mechanic, you shouldn’t be wearing safety glasses all day. Just when doing mechanical work. These are brief periods.

Also, if you are concerned about safety glasses being wrong for your eyes, imagine how bad getting a broken end of a snap ring in your eyes will be. If you are not convinced, call your eye doctor or your regular doctor for advice. Your vision is irreplaceable.

OK, if I convinced you, the next step.

Finding The Best Safety Glasses With Readers

I am not going to get into some technical mumbo-jumbo, but I want to say from my experience, the best safety glasses with readers are the ones within arms reach. Therefore I buy packs of them and place glasses throughout my garage and my car.

Sorry for being on a soapbox today, just tired of seeing people with preventable eye injuries. Especially during planned events like working on machinery and how cheap safety glasses are.

If you have feedback and want to lecture me about being over the top about eye safety, please leave a comment below.  

Thank you, and work safely( Motorcycle Garage Safety Rules – FAQ ).

For more information: https://www.cdc.gov/niosh/topics/eye/default.html