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Eye Protection

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Keep wrecking your $50.00 sunglasses while pounding rocks?

Tired of getting rock chips in your eyes?
A scratch or nick on the eye can leave the cornea open to serious infection.

WORST CASE -- a punctured or lacerated eye may lose its fluid resulting in a permanent loss of vision in that eye.

Consider this...  Safety glasses are the ultimate in field eyewear for any geologist in the outdoors.  Some of the significant advantages include:

Image of geologist wearing safety glasses while hammering an outcrop

© 2001 Reuben Johnson

 

A geologist wearing tinted safety glasses while hammering on an outcrop.

  1. Inexpensive (about $10.00).

  2. Available with interchangeable dark, amber and clear lenses for various working and environmental conditions.

  3. Keeps blowing sand and dust out of your eyes.

  4. 100% UV filtering (even with clear lenses).  Among other problems avoided, this also prevents you from going snow-blind or sunblind.

  5. Won't chip or shatter.

  6. Numerous styles available.

  7. You may save the ONLY pair of eyes you'll ever have.

  8. Available at any hardware store.

 

Protective Eyewear Tests

Note the two shattered lens types (left and center).  Not only did the projectile enter the test dummy's eye, so did the glass and resin fragments.  If you prescription glasses or sunglasses are made of these or similar materials, this could happen to you.

In the image on the right, the safety lens remains intact, the eye is unharmed, and the projectile can be seen a short distance from the lens having bounced off.
Image of glass eyewear being broken in an impact test. Image of resin eyewear being broken in an impact test. Image of polycarbonate eyewear surviving an impact test.

Glass

Allyl Resin

Polycarbonate

 

Sunblindness and Snow-blindness

This is typically a problem reserved to snow country though it can occur on lakes and desert areas.

 

True Story:  On a field exercise in the summer of 2001, a University of Wisconsin geology undergrad was accidentally though forcefully poked in the eye by the steel-tipped end of my Jacob staff.  Fortunately, he was wearing safety glasses and no injury was incurred.  Otherwise, his prescription glasses surely would have been broken and likely cut his eyelid and/or eyeball in the process.

 

References and Citations used in this page:

Nelson 1978, p 23-24.

 

PARENT PAGE Keeping Warm Keeping Cool Nylon vs Cotton Eye Protection Knee Pads Orange Vests

 

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This site was last updated August 20, 2004

Copyright © 2001-2004 All rights reserved.

 

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