Posted By Davelfc Good Afternoon to all. I was hoping that some one could point me in the write direction. Background: my company are involved in high rise developments, we have over a period of time with accident reviews and from inspection and monitoring, then discussed at management review, highlighted a requirement for construction staff to wear safety eye protection. This has increasingly become an issue with data cables in buildings as well as the service cable problem. We do tie back bag and tape back cabling, but with large high-rise developments and work in progress then operatives become complacent and forgetful and these controls are sometimes missed, there is a real danger of cables catching people in the eye, also whilst pulling cables through and dust etc. We have recently made it Group Policy that all directly employed will wear safety eye wear, in addition to those requiring by task assessment, after a recent inspection conducted by myself on one of our site I decided more had to be done, it has now been made compulsory for all on site to wear eye protection and has been made policy included at induction and communicated to all subcontractors and directly employed staff. It has been easier to police than anticipated and most personnel have bought in to the concept however some directly employed personnel do like the option of wearing goggles over their glasses for those on prescription. Is there any medical reason why someone who has eyesight deficiency and requires to wear prescription glasses, cannot wear suitable eye protection over their glasses or a visor from their helmet? We have invested in eye protection and issued to all operatives, and are looking into suitable eye protection for those who wear glasses, we are conducting a feasibility study into supplying prescription glasses to staff, in the mean time the solution is goggles over the top or visor from helmet. One of the directly employed staff are not happy with goggles and visor, and have requested prescription safety spectacles Any advice would be much appreciated. Regards Dave

Posted By holmezy Dave, if you have identified a requirement for eye protection to be worn, then for those employees who require corrective lenses, you have a duty to supply prescription safety eyewear. If you deem that goggle are required, then you either have to supply safety prescription goggles or goggles that can be worn over normal specs, but then you are into a suitability and effectiveness argument! You are only obliged to supply minimum standards, ie single vision specs,(unless totally unsuitable) but for those who need vari focals, you may be able to come to some sort of contributary agreement. By the way, if the company pays for the safety prescription specs, then the company owns them! Holmezy

Posted By Merv Newman Goggles and prescription glasses are/is always a tricky question. If you have to wear prescription glasses and are then required to wear goggles on top then there is always the question of comfort/compression/distance. Go for your risk assessment. Which people NEED to wear additional protection ? When ? Then treat them case by case. In the situations you describe, loose cable ends and some dust, then I would think that face visors or drop-down eye protection would probably be enough to mitigate the risk. Some of our colleagues may disagree, but we are not talking chemical/fume hazard are we ? Merv