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Eye Protection

Emergency response and disaster recovery personnel are required to use protective eyewear. Eye and face protection must be provided whenever necessary to protect against chemical, environmental, and radiological hazards or mechanical irritants.

Ensuring worker safety includes conducting a workplace hazard assessment and providing adequate training for all workers who require eye and face protection. When employees are trained to work safely, through the following requirements, they should be able to anticipate and avoid injury from job related hazards.

Types of Protective Eyewear

• Eye Glasses - Designed to protect eyes against impact from small objects in accordance with ANSI Standards. Safety glasses shall have side shields to protect the eyes from material entering from behind the lens. Prescription glasses are not a substitute for safety glasses unless they meet ANSI Standards (normal prescription glasses are rated 'impact resistant', which is less stringent than ANSI Standard requirements). Prescription safety glasses shall have identification on the lens or frames to be acceptable as safety eye wear.



• Goggles - Appropriately fitted, indirectly-vented goggles* with a manufacturer’s anti-fog coating provide the most reliable practical eye protection from splashes, sprays, and respiratory droplets. Newer styles of goggles may provide better indirect airflow properties to reduce fogging, as well as better peripheral vision and more size options for fitting goggles to different workers. Many styles of goggles fit adequately over prescription glasses with minimal gaps. However, to be efficacious, goggles must fit snugly, particularly from the corners of the eye across the brow. While highly effective as eye protection, goggles do not provide splash or spray protection to other parts of the face.



• Face Shields - As opposed to goggles, a face shield can also provide protection to other facial areas. To provide better face and eye protection from splashes and sprays, a face shield should have crown and chin protection and wrap around the face to the point of the ear, which reduces the likelihood that a splash could go around the edge of the shield and reach the eyes. Disposable face shields for medical personnel made of light weight films that are attached to a surgical mask or fit loosely around the face should not be relied upon as optimal protection.



• Eye Wash - An important part of eye protection is the availability of emergency eye wash stations. Portable squeeze bottle eye washes shall be available where employees are exposed to particles or non-corrosive liquids. In locations where caustic chemicals are used, an eye wash station designed for 15 minute continuous operation shall be available, and in all cases, is the preferred method of eye wash where practical.

Eye protection should be selected in the context of other Personal Protection Equipment (PPE) use requirements. Safety goggles may not fit properly when used with certain half-face respirators, and similarly, face shields may not fit properly over some respirators. Once PPE requirements have been established for a specific infection control situation, the selected PPE should be pre-tested to assure suitable fit and protection when used as an ensemble. Elastomeric, full facepiece respirators and powered air-purifying respirators (PAPRs) have the advantage of incidentally providing optimal eye protection. In situations where all combinations of PPE may not be readily available to workers, judicious selection of complementary PPE is important to allow for appropriate protection.

Potentially contaminated eye protection should be removed by handling only the portion of this equipment that secures the device to the head (i.e., plastic temples, elasticized band, ties), as this is considered relatively "clean." The front and sides of the device (i.e., goggles, face shield) should not be touched, as these are the surfaces most likely to become contaminated by sprays, splashes, or droplets during patient care. Non-disposable eye protection should be placed in a designated receptacle for subsequent cleaning and disinfection. The sequence of PPE removal should follow a defined regimen that should be developed by infection control staff and take into consideration the need to remove other PPE.