The swashbuckling pirate and his eye patch have remained in our imaginations since childhood. But losing an eye at work is not an imaginary problem. Every day an estimated 1,000 eye injuries occur in the workplace and cost businesses more than $300 million per year in lost production time, medical expenses, and workers’ compensation.
Many eye injuries occur simply because employees aren’t using safety eyewear. The Bureau of Labor Statistics reports that three out of every five workers who received eye injuries were not wearing eye protection. Others were harmed when they wore the wrong kind of eye protection for the job.