Abstract
Safety Associations have advocated the use of eye protection on a hazard-area basis. A series of scenario analyses were performed on 448 eye injury cases, which occurred over a two year period in a southwestern petro-chemical manufacturing complex, in order to examine the effectiveness of this policy. The resulting patterns indicated that the majority of workers, who had incidents, complied with the area based protection policy and still suffered injury (95.1%). Subsequent analysis indicated that a moving object, usually in the form of debris, was the major source of injury (74.3%) and the remaining cases were a result of fluid contact (24.6%). The results suggest that various types of debris and fluids are able to circumvent designated protective devices due to inadequacy, improper wear and/or unforeseen hazards. It is suggested that an integrated application of eyehazard area and job protection would provide for situations where specific tasks within an already established eyehazard environment would produce hazardous conditions not covered by present policy.
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