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For anyone that wears prescription glasses doing activities that require safety glasses becomes a problem if you don’t have a prescription pair of safety glasses. You can always purchase those big ugly safety glasses that fit over your glasses, but those things look silly.
You can go down to your local optical retailer to get prescription safety glasses, but often times these retailers carry a very limited selection of safety frames.
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Prescription Safety Glasses Online
This is where a place like Safety Glasses USA comes in. They have a huge selection of safety glasses whether you are just looking for non-prescription safety glasses, or if you are looking for a pair of prescription glasses they got you covered. They even have prescription goggles for snow and water sports.
If you are using your glasses for work the level of protection that you will need will be determined by your company’s safety officer. They would decide whether your job duties need basic impact or high impact safety glasses. Some may require side shields, goggles, or full face protection.
If you are an independent contractor, to be safe it is best to always pick high impact rated safety glasses just to be safe.
Safety Glasses USA
Safety Glasses USA is a Michigan-based company that was founded in 2000 by a former Marine, with an idea that safety glasses should be easy for people to find and purchase. His vision was to create a website with the best safety eyewear available in the market.
Over the years SafetyGlassesUSA.com has become a dominant force and is a leading online retailer of safety eyewear, sunglasses, as well as personal protection equipment. Having over 60 different brands and thousands of frames they have a frame to complement nearly any activity.
How to Order Prescription Safety Glasses Online
Safety Glasses USA works with SportsRx to bring your prescription safety glasses. We just wanted to see how simple the ordering process was, What we discovered was not only was the process to order simple, they even have a system that can recommend to you the best coatings for your lenses for the activity of your choice. Take a look below.
We decided to take this Industrial Det Cord frames by Oakley that is designed up to ANSI safety standards for the workplace. We liked this frame as it provided protection, as well as comfort and fashion. If you like more traditional safety glasses with side shields they have plenty of those for you to pick from as well.
After you decide which frames you want to go with, the next screen asks what kind of prescription you need, whether you need single vision, a lined bifocal, or progressive bifocal, they have it available.
The digital lenses for single vision give you better clarity from lens edge to lens edge compared to standard lenses. You also have the option of picking which lens material you would like. Polycarbonate and Trivex lenses are the recommended lens materials to put into safety glasses due to their impact resistant properties.
They do have High-Index lenses available too if you have a higher prescription as are looking to make your lenses as thin as possible.
After you decide on what type of lenses and which material you are going to go with, the next screen gives you the option of Signature Lenses, or you can customize your own.
I thought that the recommended lens coatings for various activities is a very awesome feature of this website. It truly helps you figure out exactly what kind of lenses you need for the activity that you are doing. We went through many of the options to see what was offered but we’ll only go over two.
When we picked Signature Lenses and we picked the “Gaming” category, we were given the option of three clear lenses, all with blue light protection, and two with transitions. we think this is a fantastic recommendation. With the recent study published about how blue light damages your eyes, it is important for anyone spending time in front of a digital device for extended periods to time to have the proper eye protection to help filter out some of the blue light.
The other category I picked was fishing. Fishing was one we wanted to see what they were offering because anyone who knows a bit about fishing knows that you need a quality pair of polarized sunglasses to be able to see through the flare on the surface of the water.
And as I had anticipated all of the recommendations that popped up were ALL polarized lenses with a mirror coating. Which is great, if you are out fishing that is what you are going to want. The polarized lenses will help you see through the surface of the water.
If you decided that you didn’t want them to recommend to your lenses, you have the option of deciding which coatings you want on the lenses yourself. After you decide which coatings you want on your glasses, you are done and ready to submit your order.
Why Should You Wear Safety Eyewear?
If you are doing an activity that requires you to wear safety glasses, chances are your eyes would be in harm’s way if you were doing that activity without the glasses. Safety glasses are designed as a defense system against potential eye injuries.
The Department of Labor’s statistics shows that 1,000 people get eye injuries every single day from their job.
Prevent Blindness America’s statistics show that more than 700,000 Americans get some sort of eye injury through their occupation, 125,000 injure their eye at home, and more than 40,000 American children and adults suffer eye injury during sports. That isn’t counting any injuries that go unreported.
Safety glasses are definitely not limited to just use at work and they can protect your eyes from various potential hazards at work, home, outdoors, and playing sports. Below we have made a list of the leading hazards around the house, at work and outdoors.
- Home – Yard Work, Power Tools, Chemicals, and Cooking
- Recreation – Fireworks, Basketball, Water & Pool Activities, Fishing hooks, Guns, and Baseball/Softball
- Work – Projectiles, Dust, Chemicals, Radiation, and Bloodborne Pathogens
Most eye injuries occur because either one, the individual wasn’t wearing any eye protection, and two, the individual wasn’t wearing the correct eye protection for the task they were doing. If you were wearing the correct safety glasses, the best case scenario would be if completely blocked the injury, but at the very least it would reduce the severity of the injury.
How are Safety Glasses Different from Regular Eyeglasses?
Safety eyewear is made with a higher standard than your traditional eyewear. This standard is not only for the lenses, but the safety frames and googles as well.
No matter how durable your regular prescription glasses are or how impact resistant the lenses are, they are still not safety glasses. If you want to have safety glasses with your prescription, you need to order a specific frame that meets the safety criteria for glasses.
How are These Safety Frames and Goggles Tested?
The frames and goggles that are going to be used as safety glasses, no matter if it is going to be a high-impact application or basic impact the frames and goggles goes through the same tests each time. The tests include:
- High Mass Impact – In this test, a steel projectile that weighs 17.6 ounces is dropped through a tube at the weight of 50 inches onto the lenses which are mounted in the frame. The frame is attached to an artificial head to make it be as if someone was wearing it. To be able to pass this test, the frame must be able to hold the lenses and no pieces can come off the inside part of the frame where the lenses are being held in.
- Durability – To pass the durability test, the frames have to go through a flammability-resistance test, a corrosion resistance test, and various other durability tests.
- High-Velocity Impact – In this test, a steel ball is shot at the lenses at a speed of 150 feet per second from a distance under 10 inches. The test is done many times at different angles. The passing criteria for this test are the same as the High Mass impact test.
How To See if your Safety Glasses are the Current Standard.
The most current standard for safety eyewear was published by the American National Standards Institute (ANSI) is called the Z87.1-2010 standard. This replaced the previous standard that was called Z87.1-2003.
According to the current standard, all safety glasses that are rated for impact must carry the manufacturer’s marking followed by a “+” sign. For example, if you were to go to your local Walmart Vision Center and purchased safety glasses from there, the marking on the lens will show WM for Walmart and the “+” for the impact resistance. So, what you will see on the top corner of your lenses would be a “WM+”.
For frames that are compliant with the current standards, you would find a “Z87-2+” marked on the side of the frame, detachable side shields that are impact-rated will be marked “Z87+”.
Final Thoughts
Safety Glasses USA has all kinds of sporty prescription eyewear, whether you are looking for some goggles for swimming, safety glasses for work, or hitting the hiking trails, they have got a frame that can be custom-tailored to you. With nearly 90% of eye injuries being preventable with safety glasses, it is best to have a pair of safety ready to use if you wear prescription glasses.
Have you heard of prescription safety glasses before? Let me know below! Thank you all for stopping by Eye Health Headquarters, if you have any questions, or comments don’t hesitate to leave them below and we will get back to you as soon as we can.
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How often should I get my eyes tested? I was told every 6 months, is this correct? I really like your article, I have always wondered what I should do, I have put on safety glasses over glasses and I can’t see a thing, thanks for the info! Thank you for showing me where to go!
I’ve seen like bumper packs of five safety glasses in many DIY stores, but as you mention above – I doubt they’d hold up that well in a work environment.
With these sorts of jobs your eyes are always going to be at risk – so why shirk on price? If you lose sight in one eye that’s all she wrote – not many people get these sort of injuries repaired, and not many people can afford to.
Would you say that these Oakley brand of glasses are built to last for a lifetime, as long as you don’t suffer a really bad injury in that area?
I used to wear glasses and once in a while I’d have to wear those big ugly safety googles overtop. It was not a pretty sight.
I’m happy to see that progress has been made in the field of safety eyewear. I hadn’t realized that there was such a diversity for use and styles available. I learned a lot from your article and am thinking that my husband could benefit from owning a pair for when he is working out in our wood lot. The prices seem reasonable even though we can’t really place a price on our eyesight.
Does spending hours on computer dangerous for my health? I was wondering if I may need a pair of prescription safety glasses because I spend not less than 8 hours each given day seating on my computer.
So far I don’t have any problem with my eyesight, but I am afraid I may be damaging it. What do you suggest?