Most of the time, if your job places you at risk of eye injury, your employer will have made that fact abundantly clear and provided you with eye protection. However, many workers simply don’t wear their safety glasses because they’re ill-fitting or poorly styled.
Vision isn’t a bodily function that can be replaced. While vision can be corrected, once retinal cells are damaged, that’s it — they don’t regenerate like other cells in your body. Loss of vision is often permanent, so protecting your eyes is essential if your vision is important to you.
The eye protection crusaders at Stoggles rounded up five jobs where eye protection is absolutely essential. For each job, we’ll explain the real risks to your vision, the data that supports your need for safety glasses, and the specific types of coverage your safety glasses should have to fully protect your eyes.
1. The Job: Construction
It seems obvious that you’ll want eye protection if you work a construction job. Still, if you aren’t working with saws and nail guns, it can be tempting to remove your glasses — at least for a moment. Once you learn the real risks of construction-related eye injuries, you’ll realize that even a minute without eye protection is one minute too long.
The Risks
Construction workers, supervisors, and foremen are all at risk of eye injury. Cement mixing, grinding, sawing, chipping, and using air-powered tools and machinery present a major risk for projectiles to strike the eye.
Chemical exposure, UV rays, and welding arcs are also threats to your vision that you’ll need to address with properly fitted safety glasses.
The Data
There are more than 10,600 eye-related injuries each year in the construction field. The majority of these injuries involve projectiles, dirt, or grit in the eyes. Many of these result in trips to the emergency room and time missed from work.
The Need
To protect your eyes from projectiles, falling materials, or hardware, you need shatter-resistant glasses. You’ll also need safety glasses that prevent particles like dust, cement, and grit from entering your eyes. Naturally UV blocking lenses will keep your eyes safe from both the welding arc and sunlight.
2. The Job: Nursing
You love caring for your patients, and you know nursing can be a thankless job. Combative patients, bodily fluids, and splatters keep you on your toes and threaten your vision, so protective eyewear is essential.
The Risks
Nurses need eye protection due to their exposure to bodily fluids that could spill, splash, and splatter in their eyes. However, if you deal with combative patients, there’s also a risk of taking a limb to the eyes or even having an object hurled your way.
Even if you’ve settled into a desk job at a healthcare clinic, you still need eye protection. Long hours spent in front of a computer can place your eyes at risk of fatigue from blue light, making it harder for you to concentrate at work.
The Data
In the healthcare field, nurses are the most likely workers to sustain contact with blood and bodily fluid. Over 50% of the splashes and splatters they encounter on the job contain blood. Over 80% make it to the nurse’s face, and over 60% of the facial splatters are delivered right to the eyes.
The Need
As a nurse, you need safety glasses that provide side and top shields to protect you from contact with fluids. You also need impact-resistant glasses to protect your eyes if you are struck by an object (or a body part).
It’s a smart idea to make sure your safety glasses are anti-fog coated to make sure you never need to remove them to wipe them off. Blue light blocking lenses are also ideal for helping to minimize fatigue from staring at a computer screen.
3. The Job: Office Work
Eye protection for desk jockeys? Absolutely. Keeping your eyes safe behind your computer is more important than you think.
The Risks
How blue light affects our eyes is a fairly new field of study, but research is already telling us what we already knew: it’s not good for our eyes. The duration and frequency of our exposure to blue light directly affect our eye health.
Blue light is emitted from computer screens, tablets, smartphones, and certain types of fluorescent light bulbs. It is also emitted from the sun.
The Data
The sobering fact about blue light exposure is that it’s hurting the eyes of the younger population. In fact, adults younger than 30 are most vulnerable to this workplace threat. Women tend to experience the negative impact of blue light exposure by about 10% more than men. If you were born after 1990, your chances of developing eye issues related to blue light exposure are increased.
Because so much of our daily lives today happens via blue-light emitting devices, the time to protect our eyes is now.
The Need
Blue light-blocking glasses filter out blue light that can harm your eyes and cause them to become fatigued. If you need prescription glasses, Stoggles offers them with the same blue light blocking technology we offer on all our safety glasses.
4. The Job: Auto Repair
Whether you are a professional mechanic or a weekend oil and brake pad changer, protecting your eyes during automotive repair is essential.
The Risks
In the shop, saw blade sparks, shards of metal from grinders, and automotive fluid are all risks to your eyesight. Welding arc exposure can also harm your eyes if they aren’t protected from UV rays.
Additionally, your job places you in a unique position (quite literally, when you’re under a vehicle) to experience a weighted object strike.
The Data
Of the 2,000 eye injuries sustained per day in the United States, about 40% are sustained by craftsmen, including auto mechanics. Even if you’re simply doing a small repair at home, protecting your eyes just makes sense.
The Need
While working on a vehicle, you’ll want impact resistance, natural UV protection, and side and top shields to ensure you are protected from being hit in your eye.
5. The Job: Plumbing
It’s more than just unclogging a toilet. You know your job as a plumber is a risky business, but you might not realize that it includes a major risk to your eyes.
The Risk
Ironically, the jobs most associated with plumbers (unclogging blocked drains and toilets) are only a small part of their daily work. Plumbers help maintain water drainage, gas drainage, and waste disposal systems.
The installation of appliances and working with potentially hazardous fluids place plumbers in a high-risk category for sustaining an eye injury.
The Data
According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, plumbers are in the 40% of craft workers who are at risk of sustaining an eye injury due to flying particles, chemical exposure, and falling objects.
The Need
Safety glasses that provide impact resistance and anti-fog coating will be essential for plumbers. When working with different fluid temperatures, there’s a high potential for your glasses to fog. Removing foggy glasses places your eyes at risk, so anti-fog coating keeps you safe and on task.
Stoggles: The Stylish Way To Get to Work
Regardless of your job, there’s probably a reason to protect your eyes. Whether you’re on a construction site or sitting behind a blue-light emitting device, your vision depends on the effectiveness of your eye protection.
Stoggles safety glasses make it easy to stay protected, comfortable, and seriously stylish.
All Stoggles glasses feature:
- ANSI Z87.1-2020 certification for the industry standard in impact resistance
- Naturally UV blocking lenses
- Lightweight and comfortable polycarbonate frames and lenses
- Blue light blocking
- Anti-fog technology
- Side and top shields
- Supreme stylishness
With Stoggles, you never have to settle for function over form. Because let’s face it: if you don’t feel like a million bucks when you put on your safety glasses, you won’t wear them. Safety glasses that aren’t worn don't protect your eyes.
In addition to offering three different frame shapes, three different frame fits, and a plethora of colors that give you the ability to match your glasses to your mood or outfit, we also offer in-house prescription lenses. We craft our safety glasses with your customized corrective lenses to save you time and money, and we make sure you can see clearly while protecting your eyes.
Protection FTW!
Your job puts your eyes at risk on a daily basis. Fight back by choosing the only glasses that protect your eyes and your sense of sweet style. Stoggles give you the ability to cover your eyes in ultimate protection while customizing your shades to make them your own.
Sources:
Eye Injuries Related to Construction | CDC
Auto Mechanics and Eye Injury: Trends, Policy, and Development | AAOPT.org