Safety Glasses: How to Protect Your Eyes Effectively

Drilling, sawing, grinding: splinters and chips flying about the building site, as well as flying sparks, can rapidly draw your attention. As a result, serious injuries occur. With the appropriate safety glasses, you can avoid this. We’ll show you what to look out for.

Mechanical factors are responsible for around 70% of all eye injuries. This can happen as a result of blows, bumps, or foreign objects entering the eye. On construction sites, the risk is particularly great because while drilling, grinding, or cutting, not only do sparks fly, but also a lot of chips and splinters. This is prevented by wearing protective eyewear. You should think about the following:

1. Not All Glasses are Created Equal

The use determines the model.

On a building job, eye protection is mandatory. Employers are required to evaluate whether hazards (mechanical, optical, chemical, thermal, biological, or electrical) exist for eyes and face under the Occupational Safety and Health Act and accident prevention rules. As a result, precautionary precautions must be implemented. Which protective goggles are suitable for which purpose can be found in the professional association rules for safety and health at work. 

2. Optimal Protection, Optimal Comfort

If you don’t wear your glasses, they’re useless. As a result, ensure that the model you choose is comfortable to wear. It all begins with your weight. Modern protective goggles are so light that they are barely noticeable on the face.

The nose pads and temples may be adjusted for a perfect fit. The panes should be scratch-resistant on the exterior and fog-free on the interior for a constantly unobstructed vision. This is done using a particular coating. Last but not least, a pleasing appearance encourages the use of safety goggles.

3. Not All Discs are Created Equal

The security classes

The DIN standard EN 166, among other things, governs the standards for protective eyewear. Glasses with clear and colored plastic lenses are offered for mechanical protection. Untinted specimens, on the whole, provide complete protection against damaging UV rays. Mechanical strength is divided into five categories:

• Without marking: basic mechanical strength
• Class S: increased mechanical strength up to 5.1 meters per second impact speed
• Class F: Small energy shock up to 45 m / s
• Class B: Medium energy impact up to 120 m / s
• Class A: high energy impacts up to 190 m / s

4. Protection of the Retina – Stress on the Eyes

The short-wave, high-energy blue component in visible daylight can be harmful to the human eye!

In a large number of cell experiments, it was found that blue light can oxidatively damage the receptor cells of the retina and promote the development of age-related macular degeneration (AMD). This hitherto incurable eye disease leads to the progressive destruction of the area of ​​sharpest vision (the so-called macula lutea, also known as the “yellow spot”) and can lead to severe visual impairment. With over 50%, AMD is the most common cause of visual impairment in old age in Germany. Every third person examined over the age of 65 is already showing the first signs of macular degeneration.

There are very few receptors for short-wave light in the macula lutea. This is filtered out by the eponymous yellow pigment lutein, which protects the point of sharpest vision in this way.

Artificial light-saturated with aggressive blue now puts excessive strain on the filter pigment in the eye and leads to the death of the sensory cells. A creeping blindness sets in.

Blue light is more dangerous for the retina than UV radiation, as the ultraviolet components of UV light are already filtered out in the anterior sections of the eye, such as the cornea and lens. Visible short-wave light, on the other hand, penetrates unhindered to the retina and generates oxidative stress there.

In addition, the short-wave blue makes it difficult to see clearly because the macula lutea, as the point of sharpest vision, mainly contains receptors for green and, above all, red light. With special filter glasses such as edge and comfort filters as well as a defined frame design, such as the Pretavoir series, a lot can be contributed to the subject of “eye health” and “prevention of the eye”.

5. Effect of Edge Filter Glasses

While conventional light protection glasses reduce the visible light distributed relatively evenly over the spectrum, the edge filter cuts off part of it at a precisely defined point in the spectrum and absorbs all short-wave light below this barrier.

The visible blue is shorter-wave than the red Conventional sun protection glasses: short-wave blue light passes through and is refracted more strongly than long-wave red light, for example, and therefore also more energetic, and it is more strongly scattered in the clouded media of the eye, whether cornea, lens or vitreous humor. This scattering leads to dissolving and a reduction in contrast.

Edge filters take out the blue parts of the spectrum Conventional sun protection glasses: short-wave blue light passes through and is refracted more strongly than long-wave red light, thus reduce glare and significantly increase contrast.

Edge filters offer:

• More contrasts: the contours of objects and people are better recognized.
• Less glare: The absolute glare is reduced. This results in better visual acuity.
• The wearer feels more secure and light / dark adaptation is made much easier.

Active people who spend a lot of time in the great outdoors are advised to wear Celine glasses that are glazed with edge or comfort filters. Because nothing is more important for the eyes than optimal protection against harmful UV rays and the aggressive blue component in visible daylight.

The edge filters are divided into UV blockers with a 400 nm edge and blueblockers, which absorb visible blue light in addition to UV light. UV blockers offer very high permeability across the entire width of the spectrum, to the effect of 100% absorption of light below 400 nm at 400 nm with a sharp edge. You turn off all UV light. In the healthy eye, the UV-B radiation is absorbed by the cornea and the long-wave UV-A radiation is absorbed by the lens; thus no UV light can damage the retina, but the anterior segment of the eye can. (For example, conjunctivitis is caused by UV-B radiation, among other things.)

Looking through a blueblocker creates the impression of brightening, which is felt especially with the edge 450. The higher spectral stimulus perception for the opposite color yellow also leads to the impression of brightening. The advantage of the strong increase in contrast with edge filters comes at the expense of color vision, which is increasingly impaired with the strength of the filter.