Welding and contact lenses: A recurring rumor refuted
Firefighters who do welding in maintenance shops or rescue situations have to take standard precautions. But they need not worry that an electrical arc will fuse their contact lenses to their corneas.
“That rumor’s been around for 15 or 20 years. It seems to crop up every spring,” says Charlotte Rancilio, a spokeswoman for the American Optometric Association in Chicago.
One place it cropped up recently was a Nassau County (N.Y.) Police Department teletypewriter alarm sheet. The notice quoted a publication identified only as a “recent military safety bulletin,” saying that two electrical workers were permanently blinded because, unbeknownst to them, an electrical arc painlessly fused their contact lenses to their corneas. When they got home from work, the quote states, they removed their lenses—and their corneas with them.
Nassau County Police Department Chief Surgeon Joseph Schepis says the notification came from another county department, and Schepis’s own inquiries to ophthalmologists had since found that—although there can be corneal injury—the part about fusing the lens to the cornea isn’t true.
The AO A, the U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration, and other organizations have debunked the rumor in the past.
The AOA does warn of a temporary but extremely painful condition called welder’s flash, caused by the ultraviolet and infrared radiation in light. Six to 12 hours after exposure, a person may experience reddening of the eyes, extreme sensitivity to light, excessive tears, and the sensation of a foreign body or a gritty feeling in the eyes. These subside in 6 to 24 hours, and usually clear up in two days.
Green filter goggles of impact-resistant glass, plastic, or polycarbonate will prevent these problems. The proper shades for various uses are described in ANSI Z87.1, an American National Standards Institute standard.
