How To Choose The Right Safety Glasses?

OSHA Outreach Courses
5 min readJun 1, 2021

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Choosing the right safety glasses for occupational safety is a must. Workplace risks are high, and when working in industries and factories, the risk factor goes up! The Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) emphasis a great amount of importance on workplace safety and so on the most essential and delicate part of our body “Eyes”. In this article, we will help you find the best safety goggles for your job.

What Could Be the Right Safety Glasses?

The right safety glasses are those in which the person feels most comfortable, secure, agreeable, and easy to handle along with supreme quality. The eye-wear should consist of a low-pressure material with such a structure that covers the whole eye area best. The weight of the right safety glasses should be evenly distributed in the entire eyewear. There must be some soft and hard components around the nose, brows, and also on sidearms as it is so comforting and soothing, making the person focus on the work more and it also ensures the stability of safety glasses. Some other important features include an inclined lens and extended sidearms for lesser distraction and more feasibility.

The Importance of Supreme Quality Lens

The good quality of lens rescues wearer from fatigue, headaches, and strains because safety glasses with supreme quality lens lead the person to work confidently and managing work smoothly without any discomfort and distraction. Such types of lenses are free from imperfections and abnormality allowing the wearer natural vision. On the other hand, the low-quality lens may lead to poor optical vision, discomfort, un-natural and maybe blur vision which could cause hazards in the workplace. So this is important to emphasize great importance on safety glasses and also on the quality of the lens.

Types of Eyewear

There are many types of safety glasses that depend on the range of price, quality, structure, material used, and comfort level. They are;

  1. The safety goggles with extended side shields as protection of the side area too.
  2. Face shields with an eye-protecting lens to protect the whole face, especially the eyes.
  3. Regular safety Goggles: goggles with direct ventilation to fit securely around eyes.
  4. Hooded safety Goggles: goggles with indirect ventilation have some small indirect openings for the blockage of chemical splashes and dust.
  5. Customized glasses: The customized glasses are the ones specially manufactured to cater to the needs of the wearer. Such as customized lenses for each eye, customized structure, customized material, or customized thickness of side sheets.

Why choose the right Safety Glasses?

Why is there such a need to choose the right safety glasses? Choosing the right safety glasses is very important. Firstly, we need to understand that not all face structures and sizes are the same. They vary from person to person. Some have broad faces and some have thin, some people have popped eyes and some people have them hooked. Thus this is all about different facial bone structures so that not all safety glasses can fit all people. It will cause irritation and discomfort due to differences in size.

How to Choose the Right Safety Glasses?

In simple words, the right safety glasses are those that fit the person best. The person feels most comfortable, secure, and finds them easy to work along. These right safety glasses depend on the type of work which wearer does. Industrial work factory work and even depend on the inside and outside work.

The most essential thing to remember is that just like not all facial structures are the same, same as not all safety glasses fit every person. The structure of safety glasses is different for different people. Such as, the safety glasses which may be perfect and right for one may not be perfect and right for another one, and the point to be noted is that fault is not in the safety glasses, but it is in choosing the wrong safety glasses according to face structure. The most comfortable safety glasses will allow the wearer to use them throughout the working period without any irritation and with feasibility.

The Common Problem of Safety Goggles

As safety glasses have to be completely fit on the wearer’s head and eye area, it causes one common problem which most of the people face that is ‘Fogging’. Fogging is caused by a build-up of dirt, smoke, wind, moisture, and so forth. The fogging results in a blurred eye view causing trouble in vision. This mostly happens when the wearer is performing physical activity.

some lens provides anti-fog coatings from inside and also a scratch resisting hard coating on the outer area of safety glasses. There are also some high-resistant safety glasses for people who work in areas with high humidity levels.

Even so, not all anti-fog lenses are equally created. Some tests have to be conducted to check out the activity and performance of the lens. Such tests are mostly 8 seconds long.

The traditional hydrophobic coatings are soap-based anti-fog coatings, which wash off after few cleans. Lenses with such types of coatings are unusable and ineffective after some time. Therefore, this is important to choose lenses with long-lasting permanent hydrophilic coatings.

3 Steps to Know Before Choosing the Right Safety Glasses

Following are the steps to be considered before choosing the right safety glasses.

  • Know The Risks About Safety Hazards in your Workplace:

Always consider risks before buying safety glasses to make them ‘Right Safety Glasses’. It will help more in getting accurate glasses according to the one’s need. The risks could be;

  • chemical fumes and splashes.
  • particles of dust, wood, metal, and concrete.
  • Harmful radiation such as ultraviolet radiation, exposed light, lasers, infrared radiation, and heat.
  • physical work such as machinery work or manual work and so on.

The environment of the working area has to be under consideration before choosing the right safety glasses. Such as working indoors outdoor or working in low or high-temperature areas as there are also safety glasses available for extreme temperatures.

  • Know About Different Types of Safety Glasses and The Lens Material:

Before choosing the right safety glasses, one must have enough knowledge about different types of safety glasses and different lens materials. There are specific safety glasses for specific tasks explained above. If people choose safety glasses that are not according to their work area or environment, the safety glasses won’t work properly resulting in discomfort for the wearer.

  • Know About What Your Eyes and Body Are Preferring:

Always consider what your eyes and body are preferring as precautions and safety glasses. Know your comfort level in which type of glasses you feel most secure, confident, and comfortable. Always prefer safety glasses that have sides made with soft material, a lens that is made up of anti-fog material, and glass which covers the whole eye area.

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