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It is obligatory in most Western countries for employers to supply safety glasses or safety goggles and it is compulsory for employees to wear them when instructed to. It has been established that wearing safety glasses at work significantly reduces the number of accidents and accidents are expensive.

The Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) reported that eye injuries cost US businesses around $467 million each and every year, so a few dozen pairs of safety glasses would easily recoup their price. However, it is also vital to use safety glasses that were designed to protect the eyes of wearers in specific professions.

One of the concerns with safety glasses is that they fog up. This means that employees often have to take off their glasses to de-mist them, which lessens the effectiveness of the glasses. Stopping fogging or misting is a major difficulty for makers of safety glasses.

The reason for of fogging is a lack of air flow. This is usually only a problem with goggles, because they tend to be a tighter fit so they become warmer, which vaporizes any moisture created by the eyes or by perspiration. It can also be caused by a low ambient temperature.

Consequently the first step towards solving the problem of fogging or misting in safety glasses is to find out where and why it happens. Fogging will generally occur when the worker moves from a hot region to a cold one, in hot humid zones or where the employee’s body temperature is higher than the ambient temperature.

The first line of attack should be to opt for lenses that will cope with those environments or conditions. Lenses can be coated with anti-fogging or anti-misting coatings. These coatings are applied at the time of manufacture and ought to last the lifetime of the safety glasses.

These coatings will prevent the build up of water droplets on the lenses permitting clear vision. There are other coatings that can be applied as well, so it is a question of seeing what types of coatings are obtainable from your dealer.

It is worth remembering that not all anti-fog coatings are effectual under all the conditions where fogging can occur, so you should be specific when explaining to your supplier why you require anti-fog lenses.

If someone has to enter an area where fogging often happens, supplying an anti-fog cloth to wipe on their lenses is a short term help. These cloths are alright to use on most lenses, so it is wise to enquire. The effects ought to continue for a number of hours.

If personnel move from one zone to another and have to change their safety glasses from zone to zone, they ought to be shown how to recognize safety glasses with the different coatings. Lenses that have been treated at the factory with an anti fog coating are often stamped with the letters ‘AF’.

It is worth learning how to deal with fogged safety glasses, because it can save a great deal of frustration, misery and money, if you just spend a little time getting the correct safety equipment.

Owen Jones, the writer of this article, writes on several subjects, but is now concerned with Uvex Safety Glasses. If you want to know more, please visit our site at Safety Glasses Bifocal

Power tools have largely taken over from hand tools all around the world, because they allow individuals to get more work done in an alloted space of time. Power tools work far more quickly than hand tools and without the operative having to expend a lot of energy having to turn a handle or push a saw.

However, the increased productivity that power tools deliver comes at a cost: 1] you have to pay for the electricity that drives the apparatus and 2] there is an increased danger to the operative’s health and safety. The price of the electricity ought to be more than easily covered by the raised productivity, but health and safety is often disregarded until it is too late.

People appear to not comprehend the potential dangers of an inexperienced person using a power tool. For instance, a slip with a hand saw, normally means an ugly joint, but a slip with a power saw can cost a finger; a miss whilst hammering a nail in can cost a bruised finger or an ugly dent, but a slip with a nail gun can be like having a bullet in the leg.

This is why insurance companies have made it imperative for firms employing trades people to send their workers on health and safety courses. Claims from inexpert workers was becoming ludicrous as inexpert trades people gave up their old hand tool in favour of the powered alternative.

It caused a great deal of controversy in the Eighties and Nineties in the building industry among employers and employees alike to have to send people on courses about how to use power tools. In Britain, employers were not allowed to let a carpenter use a rotary saw, for instance, unless he or she could prove that they had been trained to use one. Most individuals thought that the health and safety lot had gone too far.

But there were not so many accidents; less time off work due to injury and not so many claims against the insurance companies.

There was tremendous opposition in our building firm from the workforce, when we declared that nobody could sign out a power tool unless he/she had a valid safety certificate to confirm training in the use of that particular piece of apparatus.

We also had a joinery shop, where traditionally every carpenter could go to make anything he needed. Then this policy came in and just one carpenter out of forty was allowed to use the tools. All of a sudden there was a rush to get safety certificates. The new laws had hurt people’s pride.

They thought that they were being told that they did not know their trade, but once they were disqualified from using power tools, they were made to look like inexpert apprentices again. So there was a rush to get a certificate and power tool companies would send a safety specialist to the workplace to train all the relevant tradesmen in the use of their power tools free of charge and pass out certificates.

Then our firm decided to get their ISO 9000 certificate and power tools had to be given certificates of inspection too. So now we had to employ someone to look after the power tools.

Only tradesmen with certificates of competence could sign out a power tool and a power tool could only be signed out if it had a certificate to prove that it had been passed ‘safe for use’ within the last two months. All power tools had to have a certificate of reliability attached to it, a set of safety rules and a pair of safety glasses. That covered the firm from accusations of negligence.

That was 15-20 years ago in the building industry in the UK. I am not saying all this as a history lesson, but more to point out that people can go to a store and purchase or hire very dangerous power tools without having to prove competence. Contractors at work have to prove that they and the tools are up to the job, but the public does not.

I am not in favour of another layer of bureaucracy, but I do would like to make people aware of the danger of not knowing how to use power tools correctly and without even the most fundamental safety equipment.

Do not use power tools without safety glasses is the first rule. Shield your eyes from splinters and flying debris at all costs. A professional would, so so should you.

Owen Jones, the writer of this piece, writes on several subjects, but is now involved with Uvex Safety Glasses. If you want to know more, please visit our site at Safety Glasses Bifocal