vitals.lifehacker.com: Contacts with cat pupils or neon colors can be fun, but are you sure you want to put a piece of plastic from a costume store into your eye? We’ve got some tips from the American Optometric Association on how to look cool at parties without getting a raging eye infection.
5 comments:
Ordinary contacts come with a litany of risks. I have been wearing contacts most days for the past year and I just got a “raging eye infection” last week because my case was contaminated. Improper storage or care for normal contacts can result in infections, scratched corneas, or blindness. Contacts can be contaminated at any stage of manufacturing, storage, or use. You are putting something on your eye – one of the few sensitive and exposed organs on your body. And these are the contacts prescribed by doctors. So it only makes sense that buying contacts from a disreputable source is a very bad idea – regardless of the cost benefits. Eyes some of the most important things on your body to care for. In many cases, loss of eyesight could have been prevented or treated. In the UK, an estimated 50% of vision loss could have been prevented. Take care of your eyes this Halloween, and don’t skimp when purchasing costume contacts.
I’ve heard about people doing serious damage from contact lenses intended for Halloween costumes before. After reading this article, I decided to poke around online to see how easy it is to get unsafe contacts. I found contact lenses that claim to be FDA approved, but as far as I can tell don’t require a prescription of any kind, but they are still in the ballpark cost per lens this article suggests. I could definitely see someone thinking they are getting costume lenses safely given that the site claims their product is FDA approved. However, another site says people are required by law to get a prescription for lenses, which makes me wonder if people shouldn’t be able to buy lenses legally but that law isn’t enforced. Regardless, I think costume eye contact safety is important general information in the theater industry since performers might be asked to wear them, and we have to make sure that is done safely.
My first thought When reading the articles head line was well most likely not cause most Halloween costume stuff is made of so cheap an sketchy materials. That said though I like how the article points out if the contacts don't require a doctors approval than they most likely are not safe to which mind just says "duh." Why in the world would anyone put something in their eye that would not require a doctors approval and not expect it to more likely than not be made out of something possible dangerous. While I'm all for good fun when it comes to Halloween I'd rather not use a product that may harm my body just for the sake of a costume. I guess the best thing to get out of this article if you didn't know it already is just don't just cheap contacts in your eyes if you wish to most likely see some time in the future.
I have been wearing contacts since the eighth grade, so that’s about 9 years now. And I have gone through my slew of bad eye care habits just out of laziness and routine. But let me tell you that you should never ever put anything in your eyes that you can buy at a party store. Never. Your eyes are already a very exposed part of your body and putting a foreign object in them needs to be taken very seriously. You should definitely wash your hands, with odorless soap if at all possible, and same goes for your storage container between uses. I have never heard of anyone sharing contact lenses before but my goodness that sounds like the grossest thing I have ever heard. Your eyes are literally filled with a bunch of gunk and bacteria and other things that are specific to you and only you and putting that stuff from your friend’s eyes into yours just can not sound like a good idea to anybody.
Contacts in general can be really bad for your eyes, especially over time. I really wish this article went into more detail about the effects of the Halloween contacts, because they are sold in many stores for pretty cheap and I am sure that their have been many cases where they cause problems. I wear a shade of purple glasses because I have Irlen Syndrome, which the lenses correct for how my brain interprets visual information. They lab that creates the special glasses also creates contact versions, and my doctor highly encourages them because they are more effective as they completely block out all other light from entering the eye. If I were to wear them that would mean my eyes would turn a murky kind of purple, because they are not bright neon painted colors like the halloween contacts but when the color is overlaid on your eye color it does still change the color. I don't think I will do this anytime soon, and I am always surprised that this is something that interests people.
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