For the millions of people who wear corrective lenses, buying additional eyewear (like sunglasses or protective safety glasses) can be a challenge. Instead of simply buying a pair of shades that meet your style requirements, you have the added challenge of needing eyewear that provides aesthetics and the ability to customize your lenses to your specific prescription.
For decades, people who wear vision-correcting lenses have suffered uncomfortable, sub-par frame options in the name of safety. Ill-fitting glasses and goggles have to be worn over their regular eyeglasses, creating a double layer of ocular angst. Discomfort, fog, and difficulty getting glasses to stay in place are the hallmarks of this flawed safety-glass scenario.
The team at Stoggles says enough is enough. Wearing corrective lenses shouldn’t mean you have to be uncomfortable, especially when wearing eyewear designed to protect you. Together, we’ll explore how common eye injuries are, why safety glasses are essential, and why prescription Stoggles are the solution you need.
Are Eye Injuries a Big Deal?
People get injured every day. From cuts and scrapes to major accidents, there’s definitely a difference between sustaining an injury that doesn’t affect your life much and one that really takes you out of the game.
So, where do eye injuries fall on this line of losses? Pretty high up the chain.
Here are our top eye injury FAQs:
How Common Are Eye Injuries?
They seem rare, especially if you’ve never had one, but eye injuries are extremely common. Occurring at a rate of 2.5 million per year in the U.S., these injuries often require time off of work, take you out of your favorite pastime, and in some cases, result in total vision loss.
Of those 2.5 million injuries, men lead the way, accounting for a whopping 74% of all eye injuries sustained in the U.S. yearly.
How Much Will an Eye Injury Cost me?
Dealing with an eye injury costs time and money that most of us don’t have banked away. If your injury is significant enough to send you to the ER, you’ll incur medical bills for treatment and possibly operative and post-operative care.
An eye injury that keeps you from work can result in missed pay or the complete exhaustion of your sick time: two scenarios that give most employees cold sweats.
Is Vision Loss from Eye Injuries Permanent?
We never really expect to lose our vision with an eye injury, but because of how the eye is constructed, vision loss is a real threat anytime our eyes are injured.
The eyes are intricate and home to some pretty incredible cells. Unlike most cells in your body, the cells in your retina-the ones responsible for your ability to see-don’t regenerate. When they are damaged or destroyed, part of your vision becomes damaged or destroyed.
Because these cells are so important and fragile, you’d expect them to be located behind a protective layer of thick bone or muscle. In reality, they’re located behind the gelatinous goo that gives your eyeball its shape, called the vitreous body.
Several other structures, like the cornea, pupil, and lens, are also located in front of the retina. When your eye is injured, these structures are usually the first to take the hit. It’s common to have cuts, scratches, and burns on the cornea. These usually clear up on their own and sometimes do not require medical attention.
However, strikes from flying debris, chemical exposures, and fluid splashes and splatters can all harm the front structures of the eye and penetrate to the retina, harming your retinal cells and leaving you with partial or total vision loss.
Why Safety Glasses?
Many of us grew up in a generation that learned to ride our bikes without a helmet. “We survived,” is our defensive battle cry. If you find yourself a hard sell on bike helmets, it’s understandable you’d be a hard sell on safety glasses.
Time has taught us that we can do better when we know better. Just like studies that proved bike helmets could prevent numerous head injuries in a bicycling accident, studies show that 90% of all eye-related injuries are completely preventable simply by wearing proper safety glasses.
Still not convinced you need safety glasses? Let’s find out where the 2.5 million eye injuries each year are happening to determine your own risk:
Eye Injuries At Home
Surprisingly, more than half (52%) of all yearly eye injuries take place in the home. Cleaning with chemicals, doing yard work, working with small power tools, or tackling a home repair project are all ways we expose our eyes to danger.
While no one wants to be the person pushing a lawnmower with hearing protection and safety goggles, damaging your eyesight because your mower chucked a rock in your face won’t give you any cool points either. You want to be the talk of the neighborhood for your sweet landscaping job and not for crying and holding your eye, sitting next to your garden gnome.
If you wear corrective lenses, your chances for an eye injury at home could be greater if you leave your glasses on while you work. Glass lens types are prone to shattering, unlike our BFF aka Best Frames Forever — polycarbonate lenses.
Eye Injuries At Play
Professional baseball players aren’t the only ones risking their vision while they play ball. Even recreational leaguers are at risk. In fact, one in four eye injuries classified as “home” injuries were the result of some type of hobby or sport.
That means your Saturday racquetball match or backyard putting green are both spots that present a risk to your eyes, whether you realize it or not. People with corrective lenses may switch to prescription sunglasses to play outdoors, but these glasses might not be impact-resistant, making your eyes vulnerable to injuries.
Eye Injuries at Your Workplace
On-the-job injuries are carefully tracked and recorded by OSHA (Occupational Safety and Health Administration). We have entire textbooks of information about how dangerous our work environments can be for our eyes.
Each day, about 2,000 workers sustain an eye-related injury on the job. A little less than half of these result in a trip to the emergency room. About 100 of these injuries require time off from work. Let’s be real: We want to spend our time off chillaxing, not treating injuries.
Since OSHA works with employers to ensure your work environment is safe, you may already know about eye-related injury risks at your job. Your employer may have even given you OSHA-approved eyewear to protect your eyes.
However, many workers simply don’t use protective eyewear, don’t use it consistently, or don’t use it properly. If you wear prescription eyeglasses, you’re more likely to avoid using safety glasses because they aren’t as comfortable and can make it more difficult to see your task.
The Problem With Prescription Safety Glasses
When two things come together to create an even better third thing, it’s the kind of heart-warming story that makes us feel better, even on our worst days. Like how cake and ice cream got together to form ice cream cake in the 1600s.Or like how mold and sugar made penicillin. Two equally critical events to human history.
However, prescription eyeglasses were invented in the 1300s(ish). Powel Johnson invented the iteration of the first safety eyewear, receiving his patent in 1880. So, why did we have to wait until 2020 for these awesome items to team up?
Here’s the problem with most of the basic safety prescription glasses. (By the way, we mean basic in every meaning of the term.) The downfall of Rx safety glasses largely lies in their super-pronounced “wrap-around shape.”
Not only is this style deeply unflattering and uncomfortable, but it distorts and warps the prescription on the sides. Whether you need prescription glasses or not, we can all agree that peripheral vision is pretty important. These curved lenses make it harder to add prescriptions to glasses, often resulting in fun-house-mirror-style effects from the side of the lenses.
In May of 2020, Stoggles decided to blast some inspirational playlists and fix this. We created Rx safety eyewear that looks like your normal, favorite specs, so your prescription can be perfect every time.
What About My Eyeglasses?
The data is clear. Eye-related injuries are real, and we need to protect our eyes as best we can. For many, that means picking up a standard pair of safety glasses or goggles. For people wearing prescription glasses, there’s a bit more involved.
Goggles Over Glasses: Thanks, but No Thanks
The traditional method of protecting the eyes of people who wear eyeglasses is to force them to don massive, uncomfortable goggles over their eyeglasses. This is riddled with problems. Safety goggles or glasses that fit over your prescription glasses make it harder to see, which can present a safety issue itself.
Additionally, goggles worn over glasses just aren’t comfortable. Your regular eyeglasses will begin to press into your temples and can result in tension headaches. Not to mention, the double layers of glass and plastic can become fog magnets.
Prescription Safety Glasses
Prescription safety glasses are available, but your employer may not foot the bill because they aren’t required to do so. That means you’ll have to order them yourself. If you’re ordering your own prescription safety glasses, you’ll likely be a victim of sticker shock.
The cost isn’t the only surprising element of prescription safety glasses; you’ll also find that many companies don’t offer their safety glasses with prescription lenses. If they do, they may not offer glasses that meet the industry standards for protection.
Cue the dramatic music — Stoggles is here to save the day with the safety eyewear that checks all your boxes.
Why Stoggles?
Don’t call them glasses, because they aren’t. Stoggles are a hybrid style of eyewear that fits like your regular eyeglasses, protects like safety glasses, and meets the safety standards you’d expect from incredibly durable personal protective equipment.
Our eyewear is protective and meets the industry standards for impact resistance and safety while offering several other features that you’ll find extremely comfortable and useful.
The fact that Stoggles are fashionable… that’s a safety feature, too. Let’s face it; if your eye protection isn’t comfortable and attractive, you’re not going to wear it whether at home, work, or at play. We designed Stoggles to be both protective and aesthetically pleasing, so you don’t have to choose between safety or style.
Stoggles are a better solution than prescription safety glasses, and here’s why:
Side and Top Shields
You might think wearing your regular eyeglasses is the solution for protecting your eyes, but that isn’t true. Regular eyeglasses leave gaps at the top of your brow and across your temples where fluids and debris can enter your eye area and cause an injury.
Stoggles are designed with streamlined top and side shields to protect the areas around your eye that your prescription glasses leave vulnerable. Our side and top shields are made from polycarbonate material, the same material we use on our tough-as-nails lenses and arms.
How tough is tough? We’re glad you brought it up…
ANSI Z87.1-2020 Certified
OSHA relies on the American National Standards Institute to determine that safety eyewear provides the appropriate level of protection needed by employees.
All Stoggles eyewear is ANSI Z87.1-2020 certified, which means our eyewear has undergone two really important tests.
- High mass impact test. For this test, a weighted ball bearing is dropped onto the lens from a particular height. To pass the test, the lens cannot shatter or break.
- High-velocity impact test. This test involves firing a ball bearing directly at the lens of the safety eyewear at high speed. To pass, the lens cannot shatter or break.
The ANSI Z87.1 standard makes Stoggles impact resistant and shatterproof, so you’ll never have to worry about your safety eyewear becoming a safety issue of their own.
Anti-Fog
Nothing is worse than a pair of glasses that continually fogs. Not only are they annoying, but they’re also a safety issue as well. When glasses fog, they have to be removed to be wiped down. When you remove your safety glasses, your eyes are at risk of injury.
Being taken off-task to stop and wipe down your glasses also presents a preventable safety issue if you simply choose eyewear with anti-fog lenses.
Stoggles lenses are coated with an anti-fogging chemical that changes the way water vapor collects on the surface. This prevents fogging and allows you to stay on task without ever needing to remove your Stoggles to wipe them down.
Blue Light Blocking
Your eyes need protection even if you sit behind a computer the majority of your day. Blue light, similar to UV light, is emitted from the sun and from devices like computers, tablets, and smartphones. Just like UV rays, blue light can penetrate deep into the eye and reach the retina.
Blue light filtering lenses protect your eyes against these rays and can help reduce your risk of developing computer vision syndrome, a condition where the eyes become tired, weak, and strained.
UV Blocking
Whether you’re in the sun or in an environment that exposes you to ultraviolet or infrared radiation, it’s important to make sure your lenses offer UV protection. Because Stoggles are made from super lightweight (and comfortable) polycarbonate, they’re naturally UV blocking, keeping your eyes safe and comfy.
Not only is UV light dangerous, but squinting in your “biking by the beach” photos totally ruins them.
Ultimate Style
No, you shouldn’t have to feel uncomfortable in your safety eyewear. In fact, you should feel safe and confident. The more confidence you have in your eyewear, the more likely you are to wear it.
Stoggles are unmatched in terms of style and protection. Our hybrid eyewear is available in several different lens shapes and numerous colors so that you can customize your look to match your outfit or even your mood.
Stoggles are here to protect your eyes. AND Stoggles are here to protect your reputation as a verifiable trendsetter and fashion icon.
Prescriptions
One of the best parts about Stoggles is they’re available with your prescription lenses. Rejoice. We handle your prescription requests in-house, saving you time and money. We ensure that your eyewear is the safest, most effective, and expertly customized part of your PPE.
Stoggles, the Rx for Safety Eyewear
You can get safety glasses virtually anywhere, but if you need a prescription, they can be harder to find. Stoggles makes it easy by offering you exceptional safety eyewear available with your customized prescription.
The verdict is in: prescription safety glasses are no match for Stoggles. Our eyewear is as attractive as it is protective and easily customizable with your prescription lens requirements. Ditch the heavy goggles you’ve been stuffing over your regular eyeglasses. Stoggles keep you protected with clear vision and superior style.
Sources:
When It Comes to Eye Injuries, the Men's Eyes Have It - American Academy of Ophthalmology
Scratch Resistant and Transparent UV-Protective Coating on Polycarbonate | SpringerLink
Preventing Eye Injuries | Prevent Blindness.org
ANSI/ISEA Z87.1-2020: Current Standard for Safety Glasses | ANSI
Anatomy of the Eye | Kellogg Eye Center | Michigan Medicine