EYES AT WORK

New Zealand Listener, Volume 36, Issue 924, 26 April 1957, Page 22

EYES AT WORK

This is the text of a talk on health broadcast recently from ZB, ZA, YA and YZ stations of the NZBS

by DR

H. B.

TURBOTT

Deputy-

Director-General of Health

CAME round a corner the other day into a cloud of flying chips of stone. A worker using a power tool was excavating a hole in a stone facing at pedestrian head level. Just as I appreciated the danger to my own eyes, a voice over my shoulder said, "Say, son, shouldn’t you be wearing your goggles?" It was a young workman and the chips were flying out past his own face. How right was that passer by! The eyes, irreplaceable except by glass ones, were at deadly risk, all for the sake of avoiding the wearing of goggles.

Such _ incidents are commonplace. Cases of eye damage are being reported constantly at work, at least three serious ones on averege every day. Some end favourably as this one did: A worker attending a metal furnace’ received a splash of molten metal in one eye. He had been supplied with safety glasses but did not sn Mt i ee i) hk i es Oe ee wear them. Luckily he was back at

work after three days. An engineering foreman was not so fortunate. He usually wore protective goggles, but forgot one morning. While he was passing a man working with a hammer and cold chisel, a piece of steel flew off and penetrated his right eye. He lost the sight of that eye. Most of the eye injuries that happen at work are preventable. But they go on, year after year, costing the taxpayer about a third of a million pounds a year in treatment and sickness and

off work benefits. The commonest cause of all these accidents to eyes is the grinding wheel with its high speed propelled particles flung as tools are touched up, or the wheel used for any of its multitudinous uses. Metallic chips and splinters coming off as metal strikes metal are very dangerous. Don’t forget this can happen at home, too! A chipped hammer edge, or roughened, broken-edged steel chisel top will break further and send off steel chips at high velocity as metal hits metal.

These sharp metal splinters penetrate an eye deeply with loss of sight the outcome, So, not only at work, but at home also, see that all hand tools are in good shape, and clean edged. At work eyes are likely to be injured by dusts, burns, splashes, radiations of heat from furnaces or of light from welding processes, and flying particles. While an employer has his

part to play in providing protection, it is the worker himself who has the last say in taking advantage of or neglecting safety precautions. Industry has to concern itself in this matter of eye hazards, for it is much better to trap troubles at their source, Safeguards are more likely to be effective on machines than on the worker, but it isn’t always possible to have them there. Goggles are the only protection possible for many eye hazards, as in hammer and chisel work, ard alkali and molten metal

splashes. Where machines can have guard plates, transparent where necesSary, Over dangerous parts as over a grinding wheel, this is much better than depending on goggles. In many cases exhaust systems can remove risks at their source, trapping dusts and grit and sucking eye dangers away from the worker. Avoiding eye injuries at work involves employer and employee in providing and in using protective measures. Time and again it comes back to the worker. If it has to be goggles then wear them. Don’t kid yourself, for example, that you can help a welder and keep your head turned away, for a short glance or eyes open side-on is enough to allow an arc-flash to do damage. Next in importance to using protective appliances is the immediate seeking of first aid when an eye is damaged. A worker who was not wearing goggles, was using a grinder not equipped with a transparent screen. A piece of metal from the job flew into his eye. Instead of leaving the eye alone and going straight to the employer’s first-aid room, he rubbed it with his hand. Rubbing forced the metal over the surface of the eye, scratching and ulcerating the cornea and iris and permanently ruining the sight. In the first-aid room dust particles on the surface can be brushed off, as can foreign bodies that are not embedded. If there is any difficulty a doctor’s help should be obtained. If it is a chemical injury wash the eye out with copious supplies of tap water from a’ jug or teapot while waiting for the doctor’s aid. I began with goggles. I end with them. Where they are the only eye protection possible, wear them. Goggles are cheaper than eyes.