Talking About Optical Goods and Services

Most people feel safe inside their own homes, but your home can be a very dangerous place for your eyes. About 2.5 million Americans injure their eyes every single year, and half of those people sustained their injury inside their own home. Most of these eye injuries could have been prevented with adequate eye protection, but eye protection is something that many people associate with dangerous workplaces, not the safety of their own homes. Here are four ways that you can seriously injure your eyes inside your home.

Cleaning your bathroom

You need to clean your bathroom regularly, but doing so exposes you to many dangerous cleaning products. You may not think that toilet bowl cleaner, drain cleaner, or other bathroom products are dangerous since you've used them for so long without any problems, but these chemicals can become a problem at any time. Toilet bowl cleaner can splash into your eye when you're bent over your toilet with a scrub brush, and if that happens, you'll wish you were wearing goggles. The chemicals burn the surface of your eye, causing severe pain and damage. Even if you rinse your eyes out with water right away, you may still suffer lasting damage like scarring on the surface of your eye or blindness.

Mowing your lawn

Some of the hazards associated with mowing your lawn, such as the sharp, spinning blades, are obvious. Some of the hazards are less well-known, which is why you don't usually see people mowing their lawns while wearing protective eyewear. Those spinning blades can whip small stones or sticks into the air at high speeds, and while they may land harmlessly on the grass, they may also land in your eye. This can lead to devastating eye injuries, and the risk of losing your vision from one of these injuries is very high. When you mow your lawn, make sure to wear polycarbonate safety goggles that have been rated to withstand high velocity impact.

Frying foods such as bacon

Bacon is delicious, but cooking it can be very dangerous to your eyes if you're not careful. This is because it releases a lot of grease when it cooks and this grease then splatters the area surrounding the pan. Burns on your skin aren't pleasant, but burns on your eyes can have more serious consequences; this is due to the risk of scarring. Scars on the surface of your eye can block light from entering your eye, leaving you with vision loss or even total blindness. Use a splatter shield when you fry foods that are likely to splatter grease, and for added protection, make sure to wear your safety goggles.

Doing home improvement projects

It may seem like common sense to wear protective eyeglasses when using power tools, but power tools are the most common cause of eye injuries. If you're using a drill, powered saw, or any other power tool to improve your home, you need to wear your safety goggles. Make sure to choose safety goggles that are rated to withstand both high velocity and high weight impacts.

You don't need to use power tools in your home improvement projects to hurt your eyes. Even simple projects like hanging a new picture on your wall can injure your eyes. Hammering a nail into your wall may seem safe, but the force of the hammering can dislodge small fragments of your walls and make them projectiles. As a general rule, anytime you use a hammer, screwdriver, or other tool, you need to be wearing protective eyewear.

Your home may feel like a safe place, but it's where half of all eye injuries occur, and you need to protect yourself. At first, you may feel silly wearing protective eye goggles to do everyday tasks like cooking and cleaning, but this is the best way to protect yourself from a serious eye injury. If you injure your eyes at home, make sure to see your optometrist right away for treatment. 

For more tips on keeping your eyes safe, contact a local ophthalmologist.