Eye Injury Prevention
So our company has had the same problematic injury year after year; eye injuries. Most of these are minor foreign body injuries, but even most of those will require offsite treatment leading into prescription eye drops to help prevent infection.
So, I wanted to discuss what others are doing for eye protection. We rolled out a "sealed" eye protection policy a few years ago, but then you have fogging issues and fitment issues. Then we went to fit testing safety glasses, but that takes even more field monitoring. Now introducing mask wearing, we're getting additional fogging issues which cause employee's to remove their safety glasses.
So, those that have had this problem what are you doing different?
Comments (10)
I have a training exercise that you can use to help train employees on why they should wear their eye protection.
Have a group of workers form a circle and have them toss a ball around to each other, easy right? Have them stop and repeat the "Catch" exercise, but this time cover one of their eyes with an eye patch, a temp. eye pad, sterile gauze. This will alter their depth perception and they will have a first hand idea of what it is like losing an eye. It will be funny to see them struggle to throw and catch, and will be very educational.
You can do the same thing to educate your people on pinch points and tool safety, but instead if covering an eye, you tape their thumb and finger to their palm and watch then try to catch a ball with "missing digits". Shoot, go for gold and do both, cover their eye and disable digits.
What are some thoughts?
"My glasses fog up" is the biggest excuse I get when I see a person with no glasses on or they just got injured because they were not wearing glasses. There are treatments that can be applied to the glasses to abate the issue, I use a product called "Cat Crap" (funny name but it tends to do the trick).
There are also anti-fogging glasses available. Is there a way to eliminate the dust particles? Can the suspended particles be engineered out? It really depends on the industry, but I have had success with incorporating ventilation/exhaust/wet systems to eliminate dust/ floating particles.
When are the eye injuries happening?
Here’s what I’m used to for safety glasses policy:
Safety glasses anywhere inside the plant fence unless inside a building or inside a vehicle with windows up.
Face-shield when taking samples, using any “striking” tool or powered tool that throws debris.
Sealed goggles when wind is above 25 (?) mph.
Also need to train for awareness that dusts and debris will accumulate on the top edge of a face-shield or goggles, and can fall into the eyes when removed. Need to position yourself so the accumulation doesn’t fall into your eyes when putting up the face shield, etc.
Interesting- could you elaborate more on what “sealed” eye protection is? Also I’ve never heard of fit testing safety glasses, was it just dust and small particles getting in their eyes?
I’m surprised there aren’t more anti-fogging glasses flooding the market, because that’s a universal problem. We should put @ritz on that ;) I know they make anti-fogging wipes and some sort of tape that provides a slight seal between the bridge of your nose and mask - not sure how well they work.
Have you tried hiring already blind employees?