Eye Injuries in the Workplace
Preventing eye injuries in the workplace is crucial to ensuring the safety and well-being of employees. Eye injuries can occur in various industries and work environments, but there are several steps employers and employees can take to minimize the risk.
Maintaining good eye health while working outdoors or in dusty environments is crucial due to the potential risks from exposure to various environmental factors that can impact your eyes.
Flying particles, dusts, splashes or flying objects are likely to expose us to potential eye injury. Fortunately, we can protect against these hazards by using the appropriate protective eyewear.
Here are some tips to promote good eye health and protect your eyes whilst working in these situations:
Always wear eye protection: A study shows that nearly three out of every five workers injured were not wearing eye protection at the time of the accident.
Wearing appropriate eye protection for the job: About 40 of the 1000 injured workers in the study were wearing some form of eye protection when the accident occurred. These workers were most likely to be wearing eyeglasses with no side shields, though injuries among employees wearing full-cup or flat-fold side shields occurred, as well.
Not all injury sources can be seen easily: almost 70% of the accidents studied resulted from flying or falling objects or sparks striking the eye. Injured workers estimated that nearly three-fifths of the objects were smaller than a pin head. Most of the particles were said to be traveling faster than a hand-thrown object when the accident occurred.
Contact with chemicals caused one-fifth of the injuries.
Other accidents were caused by objects swinging from a fixed or attached position, like tree limbs, ropes, chains, or tools which were pulled into the eye while the worker was using them.
If you have a workplace eye injury we advise you immediately seek emergency care from your nearest hospital.
In our next article we will discuss Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) for Eye Protection.