Keeping Workplace Eye Wellness in Sight

In particular, women or workers with smaller faces must wear glasses specially sized to fit them. “That's not only a matter of cosmetics — if you have a glass designed for a larger face, you will have some gaps in coverage,” Westerdal explained.

It also is important for safety managers to take workers' PPE preferences into consideration, and to remember that workers may have to wear these glasses all day, every day. Comfort is key. Finally, workers and safety managers regularly should inspect the glasses to make sure their hinges are working well and that there are no large scratches that can obscure vision. When in doubt, it's probably best to replace the glasses.

“Safety glasses today usually cost the end user less than $5, so there is no reason not to replace them when something has happened to them,” Westerdal explains.

DILUTION IS THE SOLUTION

Part of workplace eye wellness is taking quick action should something dangerous enter a worker's eyes. Heather Koehn, associate product manager at Bradley Corp., says that in the eyewash industry, the phrase “Dilution is the solution” often is used to express the importance of emergency eyewashes or drench showers and the impact they have on worker safety.

The ANSI Z358 standard for emergency eyewash devices dictates that eyewashes should be located within 10 seconds of the potential hazard, and the worker must flush his eyes for 15 minutes. The employee must be able to activate the eyewash in one step, and the water must be tepid — if water is too cold or too hot, workers won't be able to endure 15 minutes of constant flushing.

“The ideal scenario is that if someone is exposed to a chemical of some nature, they already have been trained and know where to locate the actual station,” explains Koehn. “It's important that that station be very well lit, it's important that it be clean and completely free of any hazards as that person approaches it, and it's important that it's on the same level of travel as the worker's on.”

O'Hearn stresses that workers who have been splashed must wash out their eyes as soon as possible and continue flushing for the full 15 minutes.

“Fifteen minutes of water really flushes the eyes well, it removes the chemicals or contaminants. The 15 minutes is the recommended flushing time according to the ANSI Z358.1 standard. Not 3 minutes or 5 minutes, but 15 minutes,” he stresses. “After that, if they've been subjected to a hazard, they should immediately go to an emergency facility and have a physician examine their eyes and receive medical care.”

Koehn adds that the effectiveness of eyewash depends not only on how quickly workers can access it, but also whether the hazard affected only the eyes or the entire face. When purchasing emergency eyewashes, safety professionals therefore must consider the amount of coverage their eyewash stations provide.

Eyewash equipment also must be maintained properly and workers trained in its use. Koehn suggests leading all employees through regular training schedules and allowing them to try out the eyewash systems. “That discourages employees from tampering with or vandalizing the systems, because they understand that it's for the collective well-being [of the employees],” she says.

Eye wellness is so important because in the end, we each only have one pair of eyes. Or as Myrick says, “You're protecting your vision. Let's air on the side of ‘just in case.’”