Eye Safety Essay, Research Paper

Due you want to see me take my eye out? I can and you can too! That is if you don?t use proper eyewear when doing various activities that may be hazardous to your eyes. I would like to take the time today to explain to all of you why it is important to wear the right kind of eye protection when, let?s say, working with tools. I am also going to try and persuade you to use proper eyewear and I am going to do this with some facts, a little data, and a short story.

Do you play sports, such as tennis or baseball? Do you use a lawn mower or a lawn trimmer? Do you like to do carpentry? These and many other daily activities put people at risk for eye injuries. Eye injuries are common, especially impact injuries (that is injuries caused by something striking the eye). These injuries can range from a mild corneal abrasion to hyphema (bleeding into the anterior chamber of the eye) retinal detachment, penetration of the eye, or a ruptured globe (the eye breaking open). Sounds gruesome doesn?t it. The good news is that some eye injuries heal with no after-effects, but (and there is always a ?but?) others result in impaired vision or (especially in the case of a ruptured globe) loss of the eye. The worst part of all this news is that the largest majority of all these injuries are easily preventable and the biggest part of the people with eye injuries is that they don?t use eye protection of any kind to prevent this from happening.

Due to not participation in the use of proper eye protection, according to Sports Ophthalmology by Dr. Bruce M. Zagelbaum there has been over 200,000 eye injures in the past couple of years. According to Sports Vision (Introduction to Behavioral Optometry) by Alan W. Reichow and Michael W. Stoner, of the 200,000 injures 70% are due to sports, 10% are due to fireworks, and the other 20% go to working with tools and car accidents injuries. So you see there is a large range of ways that you can have and eye injury. All preventable if you just wear proper eye protection.

Your home is also a dangerous place, especially for children, in 1998 30% of ocular accidents were children under the age of 16. The sharp edges of a coffee table, the dinner ware that we eat with, and even the toys that we buy for them all of these things and more can cause eye injuries. Just about anything small enough to fit in the ocular area that is lying around your home can, and sometimes will, end up in the eye of a small child. Did you know that a bottle of eye drops and superglue look alike? Believe it or not there has even been records of people accidentally grabbing for there eye drop bottle and mistakenly grabbing a bottle of superglue and administrating drops into the eye.

Now I would like to take al little bit of your time to tell you how I lost my eye. As all of you may, or may not have noticed, I have a prosthetic eye (it?s my right eye). In the summer of 1993 I was outside my house when I heard my wife scream. I ran around the house to the front door, now I am not what you would call a small person, and upon arriving there the porch caved in on me. Don?t worry I was OK at that point and my wife had just seen a rat, which was the reason for the scream, but now I had a porch with a big hole (I don?t think the porch was large person compliant). At this point I was actually happy, you see I like to build things with tools and wood. Here was the perfect opportunity to indulge myself with something I like doing. So off to work my friends and I went. First the demolition. The wood, however, on the porch was so old that it had fused together. This made it almost impossible to get a crowbar or the claws of a hammer between the wood to pull them apart. With this dilemma at hand I decided to start my claw hammer at the joining of the wood and take another hammer and tap my hammer under the wood. This worked perfectly for the first couple of planks of wood. So on I went with my ingeniousness. As I was going along I had created a spark from the striking of the heads of the two hammers. This spark made it?s way to my right eye, were it struck right dead center of my pupil (I wasn?t aware of this fact quite yet). Now this didn?t hurt, it actually felt as though I had a piece of dust in my eye. So as I proceeded to wash out my eye I discovered blood floating in mid air. I was then whisked to the hospital right then and this was the last time I ever saw anything from my right eye.

I spent two weeks in the hospital were I had three surgeries. The first one to remove the fragment and my lens and after this I would still have my eye, but I would only obtain 20% of my vision (which for me was acceptable). This surgery went fine, but shortly after the surgery they discovered a bacteria that had came from the spark. Now one thing about me that you may not know is that when I do something, I go all the way through with it. The bacteria that I had caught happened to be the worst one you could catch. This bacteria ate its way through my eye. This is the key reason for my second surgery; it was to remove the bacteria by scraping the entire ocular area. This didn?t help. So I got to go through one more surgery. This surgery was they actually removed the eye, mainly due to the fact that if I hadn?t then the bacteria would have made it?s way to my other eye.

This brings me to where I am today. I suffer headaches a lot more than I use to, all due to the amount of strain that my one good eye goes through because it has to do double the work now. I am also loosing some sight in my one good eye and will progressively do slowly though out my life.

Now I didn?t tell you this story to make you feel sorry for me because I have never felt ill will toward my disposition. I know there wasn?t anything that I could do, but to move on with my life. I am telling you this story to show how easy it is to have an accident and if I had been wearing proper eye protection then I would still have both of my eyes. Now I know what you?re all thinking, ?Oh that has never happened to me and it won?t.? That?s exactly how I felt. Heck my thought on protectiveness was being careful not to hit my thumb with the hammer.

I have a different approach to eye protection now. I wear protection even if I am just going to hammer a simple nail into the wall. You never know if that nail is going to ricochet back at you upon impact of the hammering. I urge you all to wear proper eye wear and to make sure your children are looked after properly. If you child is sports active then get them into the habit of wearing proper eye protection or if they are like me and accident prone then think about there safety, especially to the ocular area.

Our sight is taken for granted each and every day. You know I never really stopped and appreciated the sunset or anything I saw until I lost one of my eyes. It got me thinking of how easily I could be or at anytime can be blind. Don?t take your sight for granted. Don?t miss a sunset or seeing your children grow older. Wear the proper protection for your eyes on any activity that may be hazardous to your eyes. The most common feeling to wearing eye protection is that they look funny or they fog up when wearing them. You know something, looking funny in eye protection is nothing compared to not having one of your eyes. Wear the eye protection, your eyes will thank you for it in the long run.

Thank you for taking the time to listen to me today I hope I have shed a little light on your EYES and maybe you might SEE things a little differently.

“Work Cited”

Gray, G. Keep an Eye on Kevin Safety Begins at Home. 1989.

Injury Prevention Library. A Guide to Eye Safety. Krames Communications. January

1985.

Linberg, John V. Oculoplastic and Orbital Emergencies. February 1, 1992.

Md. MacCumber, Mathew W. Management of Ocular Injuries and Emergencies. Bauer,

Brent A. (Illustrator). 1997.

Reichow, Alan W., Stoner, Michael W. Sports Vision (Introduction to Behavioral

Optometry. 1993.

Md. Zagelbaum , Bruce M. Sports Ophthalmology. August 1996.