ALL ABOUT THAT FLASH
Welding and metalworking can be a fun hobby or profession… until you get a piece of metal stuck in your eye! Several of our patients have come in after incidents such as this. Lucky for them, we know just what to do! Welding can actually cause lots of damage to the eyes without proper eye protection. We wanted to take this chance to highlight some of these conditions, what we can do to help as your eye doctor, and precautions welders can take to ensure their eyes are fully protected.
So what makes welding so dangerous for your eyes? The bright UV light from the welding torch is the first place we’ll start. This intense UV exposure can cause what we call a flash burn or arc eye. It can actually occur from any UV source (think of the sun reflecting off water or snow as another source), but welding torches are the most common cause of close contact to UV light. Flash burn is basically a sunburn of your eyes. Yep, you read that correctly! Your eyes can actually get sunburnt. Instead of peeling skin, our eyes, specifically the cornea, gets inflamed. The eyes can be very red and painful, you can have light sensitivity, watery eyes, and even blurry vision. As your eye doctor, we can give you drops to relax your eye muscles and ease your pain, as well as antibiotics to reduce any risk of infection. If you wear contact lenses, these will simply irritate your eyes even more during a flash burn, so we recommend going a few days or longer without contacts. Our eyes heal best under moist conditions, so we also advise to use excessive tear drops. These will also help to comfort your eyes as well!
What else can happen to your eyes from welding you might ask? The most common thing we hear from our welding patients is getting metal in their eyes. Most likely we hear about this most because this is when our patients need us most! Metal can get stuck in the cornea, or front surface of the eye. This requires an eye doctor to remove the metal with a tool to prevent any further damage to the eye. Sometimes the metal can actually form rust around it while in the eye. We call this a rust ring. When the metal piece is removed, the rust may remain. Our doctors can remove this rust ring with a tool called an Algerbrush. It is a tiny, almost drill-like, tool that will scrape away the top layer of the cornea containing rust. The good news is that our eye heals quickly! The entire front surface of the eye could be scraped off and it would heal completely in 7 days. Luckily, it is usually a tiny area that will be fully healed in a day or two. We usually prescribe antibiotics as a precautionary against infection and recommend those tear drops for the best healing again.
Although we have solutions for both of these conditions, we still advocate that the best solution is preventative eyewear to avoid them happening in the first place. Welders need to use not only safety goggles but also good, full-coverage welding shields to block out the UV light. I know we’ve heard some welders say that they can’t see as well through the shields or they get busy and forget, but eye protection and safety really should be a top priority. Repeated events and exposure without protection can cause long term damage to the eye, scarring of the cornea which will cause reduced vision, damage to the retina and even early cataracts. All these things are easily prevented with the proper eye protection though! So next time you gear up to work near metal or welding, be sure to protect those eyes properly to avoid sunburns and metal in the eyes!
