If you have ever been curious about the mechanism of this large blanket of glass typically worn by an array of professionals, from welders to very recently, healthcare workers, and wondered, “What are safety goggles used for?’, you have landed yourself in the right place.
Safety goggles are Personal Protective Equipment or PPE for the eyes. Anyone working in a precarious environment with certain safety concerns, such as factories or industrial sites will need to wear safety goggles around the eyes for protection purposes. The atmosphere of these worksites is often filled with harmful chemicals, germs, pollutive compounds.
Long-time exposure to these can result in handicapping of the workers’ eyesight. The eyes are one of the most crucial organs for everyday living as well as one’s livelihood. Hence, the middle management should always budget for a minimum of a few pairs of safety goggles for all the workers.
To find out more about the essentiality and usability of safety goggles, keep on reading.
What makes safety goggles effective?
According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, about 20,000 eye injuries occur in the workplace each year. If you are an employer, there are several aspects for you to consider before preparing to supply safety goggles to the workers that will effectively protect their eyes from airborne pollution and debris present in the workplace atmosphere.
American Academy of Ophthalmology (AAO) reports that about 90% of the work injuries would not have taken place had the workers been wearing appropriate protective eyewear.
Having said that, we have to consider that every work environment is different and thus has diverse needs. Every worker is an individual whose physical structure and requirements are also unique. Some workers may already have eye health issues such as Myopia.
These requirements are to be matched with the standards set by OSHA (Occupational Health and Safety Administration) and ANSI (American National Standards Institute). Only then can a pair of safety goggles achieve the status of ‘protective eyewear equipment’.
OSHA administers an overall evaluation of workplaces to conclude the categories of hazards present in them. These evaluations go on to dictate the kind of protective eyewear is necessary to be safe from the identified hazards. If you are in charge of employee protective gear, be mindful of the following before delving into purchasing protective eyewear:
- Factor in the potential hazards prevalent in your work environment.
- Make a list of workers who need to wear prescription glasses in their day-to-day lives. Select suitable prescription safety lenses catering to their eye health issues.
- Generally, we can divide the face shapes of individuals into certain categories such as round, square, oval, diamond-shaped, heart-shaped, etc. If the frame of safety goggles does not accurately fit the worker’s face shape and size, at some point, they will feel the urge to take them off to feel comfortable while working.
This can result to be dangerous.
So, always make sure to provide customized frames to each individual which will provide optimum coverage to their eyes from all three sides, closing the doors for anything harmful to enter.
- Check reviews online or get in touch with your network to find out about quality outlets.
Can conventional glasses replace Safety Goggles?
If you already wear spectacles, it can be annoying to have to keep track of another pair of glasses.
Conventional glasses are made with the specific purpose of helping a particular eye health condition or visual impairments. If you are working in a regular impact environment you are good to go and will not require anything else.
Safety goggles on the other hand are a type of eyewear that has to fulfill a superior criterion for impact resistance. If a pair of safety goggles is fully adhering to the higher standards for impact resistance depends on two factors: 1. The lenses and 2. The frame.
The everyday dress eyewear will not live up to codes for higher impact resistance standards set by ANSI, a private non-profit organization as safety goggles would. OSHA uses these standards to create workplace protective eyewear protocols.
They usually zero in on three prominent factors:
- Resilience
They examine the frames to find out if they are fire-resistant and can survive through erosion by chemical action.
- Impact from high velocity
They gauge how resistant both the frame and the lens can remain while facing the impact when a small particulate traveling at a rather high-velocity thrush against the lens.
- Impact of high mass
Calculate the sturdiness of the frame whether it can comfortably keep holding on to the lens as a considerably heavy figure strikes against it.
Explanation of ANSI standards for safety glasses:
ANSI has set a different congregation of standards for basic and high-impact glasses. Frames that fall into the category of the basic impact are given the markings of ‘Z87’. They mark the high-impact frames as ‘Z87+’. You must be wondering, ‘then what about the safety glasses made in association with prescriptions?’ You can only avail of prescription safety glasses after taking assistance from an eye care professional. The frame of these glasses is marked with ‘Z87-2’.
Classification of safety goggles:
As I mentioned before, not all work environment is the same. So is not the degree of hazard present in them. The exposure to radiation that you will experience working at a dentist’s office will be of Extreme Low Frequency or ELF. The same can’t be said about workers busy at or near nuclear power plants. Some occupations like plumbing, electric work, mining, construction work bring in specific jeopardy and risk factors for the safety of one’s eyes
A range of safety goggles harmonious to the variety in needs at different worksites is at our disposal.
Key risk factors based on which we can observe diversity in safety goggles are noted below:
- Exposure to harmful chemicals such as gas and splashing of liquids.
- Unfavorably high temperatures.
- Particulates such as dust and sharp speck from large grinding machines.
- Radiation in high frequency
- Sources of bright light, exemplary welding torches.
Some activities may require the workers to carry side shields and in some extreme cases, full face protection as the healthcare workers have had to do during the pandemic.
- Safety goggles with built-in side shields
According to the Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the common reason behind the injuring of people’s eyes is abrasion of the eye, be it by shrapnels or shavings of materials such as metal, plastic, wood, etc. Workers in worksites wherein a lot of scrapping and cutting is going on such as construction arena, carpentry workspace, and so on, the safety goggles should have side shield. Side shields can serve as a protective tool while in exposure to bright lights and impact as well.
- Prescription safety glasses
As you can guess from the name, these goggles serve protective purposes for workers who are short-sighted, long-sighted, or with intermediate visual impairments. Safety goggles equipped with progressive, single vision, and bifocal lenses serve the purpose of safety along with the wearer’s specific needs.
- Non-prescription safety goggles
These are plane safety goggles without the remedial qualities present in them meeting specific needs. Depending on the company you are working for, the design of the safety glasses may be customized as per the company logo.
As people age, some of us can develop difficulty with clearly noticing objects, especially writings that are too close to us. There are reading glasses available for such cases. A bifocal reading section is included in the bottom half of the lens, making it reading-friendly. For people with presbyopia, non-prescription safety glasses containing this feature is a good option to go with.
- Laboratory Safety Goggles
These safety goggles function in a way that secures you from encountering splashes of harmful chemicals into your eyes while you are busy at work. The construction of the glasses is such that it provides a covering for your eyes from all sides, preventing any mishappenings. In addition to that, you can easily wear them for long hours (as lab workers often need to do) by virtue of their construction materials being a combination of both hard and soft.
- Safety Goggles for Welding
Safety google should be a match for the kind of work you are going to do. Even though we can’t notice with the naked eye, welding of materials can radiate UV and Infrared rays along with visible bright lights. Safety goggles for welding need to bear a greater quality in them to dispense protection against powerful rays. Long-term exposure to such radiation can sometimes lead to diseases like cancer and eye cataract.
- Direct Ventilation Goggles
In these goggles, holes for ventilation are present in such a way that they initiate from the frame of the goggles but travel directly towards the interior. Workspaces that produce a lot of minute dust particles are appropriate for the use of these goggles. Ventilation is necessary to prevent fogging of the interior walls of the goggles that can make one’s vision blurry.
- Anti-fog Safety Goggles/ Indirect Ventilation Goggles
These pair of safety goggles are for people working in extremely foggy conditions. For example, people who professionally conduct emergency snow removal from streets, pavements in extreme weather conditions. These goggles possess fog repelling properties so that workers can have a clear vision while at work. The lens is induced with anti-fog treatment (Fog ban TM lens). The formation of such goggles contains indirect ventilation.
In indirect ventilation, there is no way for air on the outside to direct flow into the interior. This is due to fact that the position of the vent on the goggles is such that they face away from the front lens. The vents sit on the goggles in an angled format placed on the surface that stands just over the front lens that the worker will be looking through.
- No Ventilation Goggles
This one is pretty self-explanatory. This kind of goggles consists of no ventilation. They ensure complete isolation of your eyes from the surrounding environment, which on one hand, protects you from any kind of dust or splash. But the accumulation of fog inside the goggles can make somebody not see things clearly which can potentially cause an accident.
FAQ
- Which of the following provide the best eye protection – Prescription goggles, Non-prescription goggles, Direct or Indirect ventilation goggles?
Different classifications of goggles cater to distinct needs that workers face according to the type of exposure they are facing. They meet the demands of the situation. There is no better or worse in our opinion.
- Are poly-carbonate lenses sheer?
They come in both sheer and tinted forms.
- How much UV protection do poly-carbonate lenses provide?
They provide 100% of UV protection.
- When should safety goggles be worn?
Anyone should wear safety goggles when they are in exposure to an atmosphere that likely contains shrapnels, dust particles, high radiation, high impact, or any other harmful particles. They should also wear it if there’s the possibility of harmful chemicals splashing into their eyes.
- What does the letter F indicate in terms of the strength of safety lenses?
The letter F represents that the lens can endure the impact of minute particles traveling towards the lens at a velocity of 45 meters per second.
- According to European standards, what does rating 6 represent in terms of protection from radiation?
The rate 6 indicates that you will get complete protection from UV rays along with protection from Infrared rays.
Final thoughts
As you can recognize now, safety goggles in hazardous workplaces are an absolute necessity. It is always better to be safe than sorry as you take appropriate measures for the situation at hand. Whether you may need safety eyewear for work purposes or while working on home projects, pick a pair that will suit your situation. It can be a pair of goggles that come with side shields, prescription safety glasses, or something that you can comfortably place over your regular eyewear. Safety goggles that are suitable for an individual’s needs can lessen the potentiality of harm and injury coming their way.