Not all that long ago, I wrote about keeping your eyeballs safe and thus doing what they were meant to do for as long as possible.
Well, I happen to be of the you-can-never-nag-someone-enough-about-their-health-enough frame of mind. So when I received an email from Parkland Health & Hospital System talking about eye safety, I figured, what the heck — especially when I read that ONE MILLION PEOPLE lose some sort of vision every year due to eye injuries that could probably have been prevented.
The information comes from Mirage Shah, a fellow in the American Academy of Optometry, a doctor of optometry, and an optometrist at Parkland’s Ophthalmology Clinic. He starts with very basic advice: Wear eye-protective goggles when doing yard work, playing sports or doing — wait a sec — housework? Yes, really.
“Eye injuries occur from many different sources, such as household chemicals splashing, flying fragments and fumes in the workshop, fireworks, baseballs, tennis balls and exposure to ultraviolet (UV) sunlight,” Shah says.
The thing about these injuries is that they can happen in, quite frankly, the blink of an eye. Shah once had a patient who — if you’re squeamish, you might want hold your hands in front of your eyes for this — was trimming a hedge and a tree branch scratched his eye. He developed a fungal infection of the cornea and had to have extensive treatment.
Here are more tips:
Wear sunglasses. UV exposure doesn’t just sizzle your skin. Extended exposure has been linked to eye cancer and an increased risk for cataracts. But how many people wear sunglasses? You may be as surprised as I was by this statistic from the Vision Council: Only two-thirds of adults wear them, and less than half of them make sure their kids wear shades.
Skip toys with projectiles. Choose age-appropriate toys with the label ASTM, which means they meet standards set by the American Society for Testing and Materials.
Be picky about safety goggles. Protective eye wear for household or workshop use should be marked with this code: ASNI Z87.1. That ensures the glasses, goggles or face shield meets the requirements of the American National Standards Institute.
If your eye is injured…Contact your eye doctor or go to your nearest emergency room immediately, Shah says.
Keep sterile saline solution on hand. It’s safer than tap water for rinsing out your eyes if chemicals splash into them.
For more info and tips, click here.