Let’s turn our attention now to eye and face protection. The face is the most important part of the body to protect because it may be close to the hazard and there are several pathogen entry points (eyes, nose and mouth). Your eyes are very precious and difficult to repair or replace, therefore they must be protected. Eye and face protection equipment comes in a variety of different styles and formats. What you choose should be based upon the hazard and risk. Examples of three very different types of facial hazards are: flying objects or fragments, such as sand or dirt; liquid splashes, sprays or mists; and high energy light.

In situations where you are working with potential flying objects to the eye or face you must wear impact resistant safety glasses with or without a face shield. For example, if you work in an animal room, you might get spayed with flying debris from the animals. However, do not rely upon safety glasses to protect you from splashes or sprays, because they do not fit tightly to your face. They are not as good as goggles from protecting your eyes from splashes of chemicals and biological materials.

When there is a potential for splashes and sprays of biological or chemical liquids to the face you should wear splash googles to protect the eyes and a face mask or respirator to protect the mucus membranes of the nose and mouth. Goggles also must fit snugly over and around the eyes to prevent fluid penetration. Face masks (such as surgical masks) and respirators (such as an N95 mask) help to protect the nose and mouth from sprays or splashes. A full-face respirator would also provide protection to the eyes, nose and mouth from liquids and aerosols.

Personal glasses are not a substitute for goggles. For those people that need prescription glasses to see or use contact lenses accommodation must be made. Wearing of contact lenses in the laboratory is not recommended, because they may slip and need to be adjusted. Meanwhile the user cannot see. Therefore, people that use contact lenses should always wear prescription glasses while in the laboratory. If you need prescription glasses to see you can either buy prescription googles or buy goggles that are designed to be worn over your personal glasses. If the googles fog up, you can buy anti-fog googles or just get an anti-fog solution that you put on the inside of the googles.

 
Face shields are also very useful in the laboratory and clinical settings, because they extend down over your entire face and protect the face, nose, mouth and eyes. Be sure to buy ones that cover the forehand, extend below the chin and wrap around the sides of the face. That gives you some impact resistance and reasonably good splatter protection. However, face shields should not be relied upon solely to protect your eyes and mucus membranes from splashes. You still need to wear googles along with a variety of other personal protective equipment underneath, including your personal glasses and respirators, if needed.

 
In the laboratory you may also be exposed to optical or radiation hazards, such as UV light or lasers. In which case you should wear, googles or face shields that protect against that wavelength of light.
In the next lesson we will examine respirators in more detail.