Prescription Safety Glasses and Prescription safety goggles — When should you choose what?

Prescription safety glasses is required for the protection of personnel, especially when working in risky work environments. It is easy to find the best prescription safety glasses suitable for your respective jobs. Having safety glasses donned provides employers with a certain level of comfort and a sense of security.

Dealing with all sorts of danger at work makes your eyes prone to getting damaged over time and sometimes even causes immediate damage to them. Different hazards at work call for different safety types of gear. Therefore, you will often find safety goggles appropriate for some jobs over safety glasses and vice versa.

For instance, work environments that involve metal grinding, chemical exposure, dusty conditions, and even exposure to harmful UV rays would require you to wear safety goggles over even the best prescription safety glasses. Such situations have a higher than average chance of getting foreign objects into your eyes from the side. Only safety goggles would be able to provide complete facial sealed protection from these potential hazards.

The majority of eye protection needs would call for safety glasses. The frames, lenses, and side shields of safety glasses are equipped to provide adequate protection and safety from most potential work hazards. It is also easy to find yourself Rx safety glasses for vision correction to help protect you from objects that can potentially pierce, bruise or damage your eyes in some way. ANSI rated prescription safety glasses are even tested to withstand high impacts. The safety lenses and safety frames for safety glasses are tested to withstand high impact up to a specific plausible limit.

What is the difference between safety glasses and safety goggles?

There are two most apparent differences between safety glasses and safety goggles, and they are: 

• Wearers have to hold safety goggles using an elasticated strap that goes around the back of the head. While the safety glasses are equipped with side-arms on them for the wearer.
• Safety glasses let air enter in and around the eye area while safety goggles fit tight against the wearer’s face; they have a soft inner seal made of foam or rubber that seals the gap between the lens and the wearer’s face.

Key features to look for in safety glasses

If safety glasses is what fits the type of job you are in, then we would recommend you to make a choice based on the following features:

• Lens size and shape

The size and shape of the lenses of your Rx safety glasses is definitely the first factor to consider; finding an appropriate size of lenses based on the wearer’s face will serve the purpose of providing protection. The shape of the lens will predict the effectiveness of the protection it provides. Most lens shapes are generally concave and have a wrap-around lens following the general shape of the wearer’s face. The shape of the lens also affects the field of vision, so it would help if you can be mindful in using safety eyewear that creates minimal obstruction or blind spots while donned on.

• The optical clarity of the lens

Another factor to affect the wearer’s vision is the quality of optical clarity. The optical clarity is categorized into three classes. Wherein:
Class 1 optical clarity stands to be the highest quality, which means that it is safe for it to be worn continuously by causing no harm to the eyes.
Class 2 goes perfect for intermittent use.
Class 3, being the lowest quality of optical clarity, is only adequate for occasional use and should be avoided for an extended period of time.

• Mechanical strength

Mechanical strength refers to the impact protection that a particular pair of Rx safety glasses can withstand.

Key features to look for in safety goggles

• Ventilation

As safety goggles come with an inner seal, the airflow could be limited around the lens, causing blurring and limiting vision. So in order to avoid this, safety goggles tend to have some kind of ventilation built-in, which you can mostly find around the side or top of the goggle frame.

• Optical Clarity

The optical clarity is the same for safety goggles as it is for the safety glasses. Making use of safety goggles with an Optical clarity Class 1 rating is highly recommended.

• Size and shape

With the safety goggles, the size and shape of the lens and frame design would not impair the field of vision when worn. However, the environment where they will be worn might help you decide what size or shape is right.