Why do you need safety glasses at work?

The eyes are one of your body’s most important organs, but they are also the most delicate. Contact with foreign objects can result to temporary or permanent damage, which can result to blindness. To prevent such risk for eye injury, it is necessary to wear eye protection.

In high risk occupations where eye contact with foreign objects cannot be avoided, safety regulations include wearing eye protection at work. Occupations such as construction, engineering, and even in medicine and sports have uses for such safety eyewear.

Eye protection has many applications in sports. Cyclists wear safety glasses to protect their eyes from dust, insects, and wind blasts. Swimmers wear safety goggles to protect the eyes against water. In contact sports such as basketball and hockey, players wear protective eyewear to prevent the ball or puck from hitting theirs. Many athletes too wear such gear as protection from excessive light and heat.

Work environments have great uses for eye protection, where hazards are great and where workers usually suffer from visual impairment. Objects causing to the eyes at work include dust particles, metal, wood, small insects, debris, chemical powders and liquids and sparks from using welding tools.

Wearing safety glasses at work is included in the rules of occupational safety, and workers are fined if they fail to do so. Work places occasionally have objects being scattered around, particles flying, chemical liquids and powders spilled. Laboratory works have to protect their eyes when they deal with chemicals that can damage their eyes. Workers in construction work and factory workers in manufacturing and processing also need eye protection in their work. Welders wear safety goggles as they do welding work. As long as your eyes are exposed to threats, you need to protect them.

Risky professions should mandate the use of eye protection and other safety equipment when at work. Workers and athletes nowadays are paying little regards to their safety. Some of them may never realize the importance of their eyes in carrying out their jobs or in playin their sports. Also aside from wearing safety glasses, companies should also conduct eye check-up for their employees, or the employee should visit his optometrist regularly.

If you think your job brings risks to your eyes and are not provided a pair of safety googles at work, you should ask for one. Bring it to the management and raise your concerns about risks at work.

Keep your eyes safe always whether at play and at work.