Prescription Safety Glasses for Painting

Painting may not, at first, seem like a high-risk task.

Prescription Painting Safety Glasses

The opportunity for injury or bodily harm might not seem to be there in any great capacity. You may have undertaken a painting project yourself – painting rooms of your house, exterior walls, sheds, lawn furniture or railings – and not considered the task to be dangerous in any way.

Ask a professional painter, however; someone who’s been in the business a while, knows the tricks of the trade, and has seen it all. You’ll likely get a much different opinion. The experienced painter knows there are risks in everything from the type of paint you use to the environment in which you’ll be working.

Latex and other water-based paints are perhaps the most innocuous. But a drip of paint in the eye is nothing to be taken lightly. Although water-based, latex still includes several toxins that are harmful to your body if ingested or otherwise absorbed into the bloodstream…and one of the quickest ways into your body (besides your mouth, nose, or an open wound) is the eye. The risks only increase with the use of enamel or other, more toxic paints. Paint splashes or drips can cause physical damage to the eye at the point of impact and also cause long-term damage to the rest of the body over time.

The painting environment is another aspect that’s often overlooked when it comes to eye and bodily safety. Often a painter is working on a ladder or scaffold, where the distraction of a paint drop in the eye can cause a larger injury – or worse – due to a fall. Often a painter is painting above their heads, working on ceilings, high walls, hallways; plaster dust, chips of old paint, and minor droplets of new paint so small that they can’t even be detected pose a constant danger to the painter’s eye.

Ever paint a room with a roller brush and later notice the splatter pattern on the painting paper or tarps you laid out? If you’re not wearing safety glasses, that paint is also splattering into your eyes. Similar exposure is magnified by the use of spray paint. In aerosol form, paint is divided into thousands of miniscule droplets for better coverage and adhesion. That cloud of paint spray, containing not only paint but the solvents used to thin it, gets into your eyes no matter where you aim the paint gun.

Because of all these dangers, professional painters often require that their workers use safety glasses. They know the insurance risk, they know how many man-hours can be lost to employees suffering eye injuries, they know safety inspectors enforce the use of safety glasses for a reason…and they also just want to take care of their people. If you’re planning a painting project, large or small, take their example and get yourself a pair of safety glasses.

Rx Safety has a wide selection of comfortable, lightweight safety glasses that will protect your eyes and provide proper vision while painting. Proper vision often requires the proper prescription, which is why many of our safety glasses can easily and affordably be ordered with lenses cut into any corrective prescription you may need. Don’t put your health or safety at risk, and don’t get paint on your regular glasses…order a pair of prescription safety glasses instead, and keep the paint where you want it: on the surface of your painting project, not in your eyes.