Rank: New forum user 
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A suggestion has been made to introduce compulsory eye protection throughout our company, this is currently task based. Our business is highway maintenance and in the last 6 years we have had 2 minor (grit in eye) incidents. A number of the larger construction companies have introduced this policy and I've heard that their operatives/managers aren't happy particularly in bad weather. Thoughts appreciated.
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Rank: New forum user
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I work in a ship yard in Indonesia. It is compulsory to wear eye protection at all times when onsite. Along with safety helmets, overalls, safety foot wear and hearing protection. The weather here is either 35 degrees with 100% humidity or raining so hard you get wet looking out of the window. The weather is never an issue.
You only have two eyes so I say look after them.
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Rank: Forum user
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It seems excessive based on your accident stats, its almost tantamount to saying all outdoor workers should always wear eye protection because of the risk of airborne particles. However, in bad weather surely the obscured vision, misting up etc of safety glasses offers a much higher risk of injury than dust or dirt in the eyes (which the rain would have knocked out of the atmosphere anyway).
I'd have thought acuity of vision was absolutely essential working in high risk jobs like highway maintenance. I think your task based approach (i.e. assessed risk) is already suitable and sufficient.
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Rank: Super forum user 
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Light eye protection is mandatory in many industries, such as construction. In principle I do not like the use of mandatory PPE, which is often seen as the Philosopher's stone. PPE should come about from a RA and controls, but the reality is that much of it does not. The prinicple is that PPE should be task based with perhaps a few exceptions like hard hats. The whole concept lacks some credibility and it can make safety difficult to sell if it is not appropriate.
There is a certain amount of resentment with operatives wearing light eye protection. Glasses sometime steam up, get wet with rain and for those not used to wearing prescription glasses it can be uncomfortable. Ideally there should be a range of glassess from which the wearer can choose from. However, it is more usual for companies to provide one or two pairs and get on with it. If proper resources are provided then it does make the whole process a lot easier to sell to the workforce.
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Rank: Super forum user
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Hi - I work in the oil industry and we have had 16 recorded incidents in 2009 regardings eyes - again from grit or air borne materials.
And some happened while wearing eye protection - so I find your reported statistics very low.
Could this be down to different safety culture - macho image type thing?
And I wholly agree with Jumeriah - you only have one pair of eyes!
David
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Rank: Super forum user
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you only have two eyes & you should protect them - but we should also manage properly & blanket rules are not always correct - so I say risk assess and go from there; as compulsory wearing of eye protection in some circumstances [ I can name many if needed] can be positively dangerous and, in my humble opinion, blanket rules are a lazy way of managing
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Rank: Forum user 
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Mr Youel,
You mention that in your opinion, blanket rules are an easy way to manage. In a very diverse and hectic engineering factory, people are asked to go in and out of a variety of areas within the site. From risk assessment we have deemed some areas that require safety glasses to be worn.
As people move from areas that do and don't require safety glasses, eventually, those areas that require safety glasses are forgotten and glasses aren't worn. After consultation with the safety committee and other interested parties we decided on a blanket safety glasses policy to help all concerned.
I don't see this as lazy, I see this as helpful and pragmatic as it enables easy understanding of the sites PPE requirements and prevents those who are forgetful to protect their eyes in those hazardous areas identified.
Thanks,
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Rank: Forum user
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Doorifurkin.
You state that your company has a blanket sfety glasses policy. The company I work for also has this but still a lot of the time some people either chose not to wewar eye protection or simply forget to put them on. The worse culprits are the senior managers who rarely wear them.
I was wondering how you enforce this policy.
Mike52
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Rank: Forum user 
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Assuming that the policy and procedures have been implemented, instructed to the staff and this can be demonstrated then surely enforcement of any safety policy should be as a directly result of disciplinary processes - making reference to the individual negligence of Section 2 of HASAWA? Negligence ultimately remains as negligence quite regardless of how junior or senior a person may be, so such processes should be considered as being inclusive.
B
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Rank: Super forum user
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Andrew
Discipline is one method of ensuring compliance with company procedures but not necessarily the best incentive. Not sure what 'negligence' you are referring to in HSWA s2? At the risk of being pedantic, Section 2-9 are duties, negligence is civil law terminology. HSWA s7 would normally apply to violations of safety and specifically PPE.
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Rank: Forum user
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Sorry, classic school boy error. I had every intention of writing Section 7 when typing this out, but ending up putting Section 2 as I am presently summarizing aspects of this in another email. I suppose the lesson here is that multi-tasking works insofar as it remains at least one task at a time.
Whilst I agree that discipline is not the principle method of ensuring compliance, and by no means the best to encourage incentive by staff, it does remain the final act where failure occurs. Of course, other programs should be in place to encourage staff work to the procedures and SSOWs set out before them. I would also agree that unless this is led top-down then it will only fail as staff may naturally see the inconsistency of standards, as though there is dual-system working – i.e. one rule for the workers and other for the managers, which is that they set the rules. Where this cultural occurs is can cause tedious in other relations of work as well.
B
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Rank: Super forum user
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friends
as this is a generalist site specific questions do not usually go into enough detail to be answered specificially so generalist answers are the only ones that can be given hence my comments re blanket management decisions for eye protection; blanket decisions I believe are not the correct way to go unless all factors justify the case. In some situations a blanket rule, provided the decision has been made in a proper way, can be the correct way to go. However in many many cases blanket desisions are taken without really evaluating the various situations in any given work place
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Rank: New forum user
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Many thanks for everyone's replies that I come from varying work disciplines; one observation was the low response rate from the construction industry. I have an engineering background and I can appreciate the potential hazards within workshop areas from numerous activities but not in the open air within a works closure. Our main problem is speeding motorists and a traffic cone or pair of glasses isn't going to protect us from the strange and reckless incidents we witness every day.
Bill
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Rank: Forum user
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I think you will find light eye protection originated from petro / chem type sites where the proverbial spec of dust in the eye became an LTI because it was coated in nitric acid or some other nasty and could not simply be taken out by hand. Then, in my opinion the world went mad and we moved to managing hazard not risk, and it has become almost "fetish like" to copy this policy across industries where there is minimal risk. Are we health and safety type more guillible to salesmen or do we simply need something new to talk about on PQQ and when pitching for work?
Given the stats released by HSE about death in construction in the UK perhaps we need a bit more of a back to basics appraoch and stop playing at the edges.
Please don't make roadmen wear eye protection and whilst you are at it please consider when they need to wear head protection rather than a blanket policy - in my experience the tail gate of an 8 wheeler takes your head off and the hat just acts as a convenient handle! You know what your risks are - traffic, traffic and traffic and then the rest - other than in specific circumstances eyes don't figure highly
Cheers
Bruce
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