Protecting Your Eyes From Injury And Other Hazards
The challenge of protecting your eyes can be fully met by a general awareness of how to protect your eyes as well as knowing which of today's lenses and lens products are specifically designed for eye protection.
Protecting Your Eyes From The World Around You.
Do you work in a hazardous environment like a construction zone or workshop? Do you participate in ball sports or extreme sports? Do you have active children who need everything from UV protection to protection from potential eye injuries? If your answer is "yes," then sturdy, shatter-and-impact-resistant eyewear is a must. You have to protect your eyes, plain and simple.
Why you need eye protection:
- Nearly half of traumatic eye injuries relate to ball sports
- 45% of these occur in children under the age of 14
- 90% of these are preventable
- Polycarbonate is a lens material that is widely used for shatter-and-impact resistant lenses, and when combined with sturdy frame materials, work together to protect your eyes.
But protecting your eyes from physical hazards is only the beginning.
Protecting Your Eyes From Dangers Seen and Unseen.
Every day – sunny or cloudy, Spring through Winter – you are exposed to invisible ultraviolet rays, harmful blue light as well as the visible dangers and potentially damaging effects of glare. Though a wide range of sunwear, lens treatments and photochromic technologies are available to help you protect your eyes, there's no substitute for general knowledge and preparation for showing you why you need certain lenses and lens treatments to help protect your eyes.
Blue Light
- Blue light exists at the far end of the visible spectrum, close to ultraviolet light.
- Often associated with electronic devices and screens, harmful blue light is actually present both indoors and outdoors.
- The sun emits over 100 times the intensity of harmful blue light (which explains why the sky is blue) than electronic devices and digital screens.
- Transitions® lenses reduce exposure to harmful blue light both indoors and out.
UV Protection:
- UV light can "sunburn" the eye's surface and cause benign yellowish growths on the human eye
- Prolonged exposure to harmful UVA and UVB radiation over time can contribute to serious, age-related eye conditions or diseases
- These diseases include cataracts and macular degeneration, the leading cause of blindness in people over age 60
- Only lens materials or lens treatments that promise 100% protection against both UVA and UVB rays protect your eyes fully from the harmful rays of the sun. Demand 100% UV protection.
Glare Protection:
- In daylight, glare can occur when walking indoors to outdoors, moving from shade to sunlight, even from reflected light off of surfaces like cars or sidewalks.
- At night, glare can occur from oncoming headlights while driving, or from bright reflections off of wet roads, even signs.
- Glare can impair visual comfort and visual quality, which can diminish healthy sight.
- Anti-reflective (AR) treatments are available for many lens products to help protect your eyes. AR treatments are proven to significantly reduce glare while increasing visual comfort.
Various lens treatments and materials, along with leading lens technologies like photochromics, polarized lenses and new variable polarization can often be bundled into one lens offering for maximum versatility, as well as eye protection.