Many people consider themselves to be fairly handy around the home and like to do a lot of repair work on their own, including taking care of their lawn. Whenever you undertake any task around the house and have all of the tools at the ready, don’t forget the most important tool of them all: safety glasses.
Statistics show that the majority of the 2.5 million eye injuries in America annually occur within the home, 90% of these injuries could have been prevented by the use of safety glasses.
It is recommended by the Academy and the American Society of Ocular Trauma (ASOT) that every home has at least one pair of American National Standards Institute (ANSI)-approved safety glasses or goggles on hand. This protective eyewear can be purchased at any hardware or home improvement store, just look for the “Z87”mark that shows they are ANSI approved eyewear.
It is far easier to take the one or two seconds it takes to put on protective eyewear than to treat an eye injury, even thou it may seem like a hassle to get them and put them on when your project will “just take a second”. But in that one second you could experience an eye injury that will last for the rest of your life if it is serious enough to cause blindness or partial loss of vision in the injured eye.
Any time you are using household chemicals like oven cleaner, or pouring bleach, ammonia or other liquid cleaners into a cleaning bucket there is the risk of spraying or splashing the cleaner into your eye. Scrubbing the grill with a wire brush may seem innocent enough, but whenever you use a scrub brush some of the bristles come loose and one could flick into your eye and cause injury.
Photo: techchannel.radioshack.com
Power tools are a main cause of injury around the house as well, a weed trimmer head spins at RPM’s in the thousands and can send a pebble of piece of grass or weed stalk flying dangerously fast and your eye is the last place you would want it to land. Power saws and chain saws throw wood chips and saw dust everywhere and it is very easy to get in your eye. Power drills are notorious for breaking drill bits and this could cause a piece of sharp broken steel to dangerously fly into your eye and scratch your cornea.
Any of these tasks may seem simple and safe enough, but there is a chance of an accident that you could regret the rest of your life. After all, it happens over 2.5 million times a year. You only have two eyes, protect them.
