Can you give us an idea of how the people are getting the eye injuries? Surely elimination should be the first step?

With all due respect, John if you introduced a mandatory eye protection policy where people were carrying out work with a risk of eye injury, i'm not surprised the figures have come down. ;-)
The OP mentioned grinding tasks. I believe we need to know what people will be doing before we can give a definitive answer. Light eye protection won't necessarily help someone avoid an eye injury if they are walking past a person who is grinding.

Have a careful think and ensure that you have considered all avenues before implementing mandatory glasses, as previous posters have said with this brings its on complications. Have a look at whats going on ,what does your statistics tell you? is there a particualr area or work activity that has shown an increses in eye injuries? if so try trial periods in these areas to see if there is any differnce to your recorded accidents. Re-evaluate your risk assessments, see if there is anything there that indicates that the work task, dictates they should be wearing glasses/goggles/visor, can screens/guards etc be installed. If only one small part of your work place requires then implement a mandatory glasse's zone.
Why should every one wear glasse's if only a small percentage is at risk.

Thinking safety has become fairly normal today, but what was safe 15 years ago is now thought of as basic, perceptions continue to change.

For somebody in the past using a mobile grinding wheel / angle grinder -- I would expect a full visor now, not just goggles or glasses. In the engineering fixed location scenario, I would expect more rigorous control methods as standard.

I worked for a company 3 years ago, we had a mandatory policy of wearing safety spectacles all the time, over half the workforce wore glasses for driving or reading anyway, so it just meant that those people would get their specs made up to a CE standard as normal, all the other workers were offered a variety of glasses to wear - most chose Oakley types - mostly with a tint. Night working required clear specs obviously.

Basically, the company mantra was to ask the question, 'chicken or pasta'? The choice of meal on an aircraft taking you home.

Hi Rob,

We have a mandatory glasses policy on all our projects and have had for four years now, it was introduced because at the time 85% of our work was with Principal Contractors who had this policy in place and we wanted to standardise it across the whole company.

Initially it was difficult to enforce - partly down to a previous decision to purchase the cheapest eye protection money can buy (not mine!!) and partly because of the inherent British resistance to change!

2 years ago as part of my review of H & S within the organisation I highlighted the recurring theme from site inspections of non compliance with eye protection and hand protection. We then invited a PPE supplier in and went through what our problems were and invited him to recommend suitable alternatives to what we were using. We had various types on trial for 6 weeks and all taking part in the trial were given questionnaires to complete every week. At the end of the six weeks we selected what we believe to be the best and most suitable - not necessarily the cheapest but not the most expensive either.

The decision has paid dividends as the gloves have a cut protection factor of 3 or 5 depending on the task and last for at least a month compared to a week at best for the cheapies. The glasses are a lot more adjustable and are available in clear, smoked or amber lenses. We still get the odd few operatives who always seem to be cleaning their glasses when seen by management but generally the wearing of glasses and gloves has improved dramatically and the overall annual PPE spend has gone down.

As previous posters have mentioned you will need to glass cleaning stations and training - there is a right and a wrong way to clean glasses and light eye protection is not suitable for all tasks.

Over the years I think this has been the most difficult policy to enforce, we have seen a reduction in our minor eye injury rates and with not many working days left we have not had a single eye injury or cut hand to date this year. We are a dry lining and ceiling contractor so most of our work is above head height and involves the use of Stanley knives and the handling of metal - often with sharp edges.

If you want to know the supplier drop me a PM they do next day FOC delivery and prices are competitive.


Regards

Clive

Claire could not agree more just because 85% of your clients insist on it does not make it good health and safety, use your risk assessments they will tell you if glassess are required, obviously for larger orgnisations who insist on glassess, this is an easy option for them, as they think it gives the perception they are a safer site than that of a site that use's the common sense approach. "RISK ASSESSMENT"

Depends how you come to the conclusion that its needed Claire.
As I said ours came about following a lot of investigation and a comprehensive risk assessment.

On the other side of the coin I have done a lot of work to dispel the 'one glove does all' myth present in many workplaces. I even invested in an interesting tome by one of this forums regular contributors to increase my understanding. Reading that can hardly be described as lazy, it was hard going*



*joking Chris

My predecessor implemented a policy that safety glasses were to be worn at all times on the factory floor including good in, packing and inspection.

I have spent over a year trying to convince my boss that this mandatory policy is over the top. If risk assessments identify the need then that is one thing, but a general policy is, as others have said, being lazy

This was essentially our problem in the labs. Although people knew that some tasks in some labs required eye protection some of the time, getting staff to remember to put on glasses at some times and then being allowed to take them off at others has caused all sorts of problems. All too often the line we get was ‘Yes I knew I was supposed to be wearing glasses but I forgot to put them on!’
So it is a sort of blanket rule but I’d rather do that than miss people.

Rob,
'I have noticed that we are having quite afew eye injuries at the moment. My Director has suggested that he wants to enforce that everyone has to wear safety glasses at all times.'

.....even to bed?

On a serious note, will you also be providing 'over-specs' for those spectacle wearers amongst us? Seems to be an oversight (excuse the pun) on a few sites I've been on where this has been followed!

Ordinary prescription glasses are not a suitable substitute for Light Eye Protection. In fact they will greatly increase the extent of an injury if struck by an object.

If you are introducing any requirement for LEP you need to cost prescription eyewear as part of it. Over glasses are only suitable for short duration as they are very uncomfortable.

SP

Agreed, it's yet another issue with the LEP mandatory requirement. Some PCs do provide overglasses whilst others don't.

zimmy, good job you've still got your ears mate. :)

Ah, I'm with you know. To be honest if the site manager can't plan for the fact that he's likely to have visitors who wear glasses and need overspecs I don't hold out much hope for other areas of site management.