
Now’s the perfect time to book an eye exam, shop for new glasses, or stock up on contact lenses.
Everything you need to know to take care of your eyes — for life.
Bring on the fireworks! We’ve got your eye safety covered.
It was the Fourth of July when 10-year-old Tommy was shot in the left eye by a bottle rocket that strayed off course during a casual home celebration. His parents rushed him to emergency care, where he was given antibiotic eye drops and told to see an eye doctor the next day.
Optometrist Robert Simon, O.D., found a scratch in the clear outer layer of Tommy’s eye—a corneal abrasion. That explained the redness, swollen eyelids, and intense pain.
“Everyone knows what it’s like to get a piece of dust or dirt in your eye and how much that hurts,” says Dr. Simon, who now works at the America’s Best Contacts & Eyeglasses store in Hermitage, Tennessee, a suburb of Nashville. “You can imagine what it would be like if part of the tissue was knocked off.”
Most corneal abrasions heal within 24 to 72 hours. But that wasn’t the most concerning part. Given the nature of Tommy’s eye trauma, he could have sustained a vision-threatening injury like traumatic iritis (inflammation of the colored ring around the eye’s pupil).
Dr. Simon was also worried about possible damage to Tommy’s retina, the layer of nerve cells in the back of the eye that send signals to the brain so you can see.
Still, Tommy’s pain was too great for him to sit through a more thorough exam. Dr. Simon gave him a bandage contact lens to protect the cornea and administered a dilating drop for the pain and a steroid drop to guard against iritis.
He told Tommy to come back the next day, hoping the pain would diminish enough to check for further damage.
Tommy is just one of the thousands of Americans treated for fireworks injuries every year. According to the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission’s latest fireworks report, eight people were killed and an estimated 12,900 people were injured by fireworks in 2017, and 14% of those injuries were to the eyes.
“With fireworks, you can have three kinds of eye injury,” Dr. Simon says. “You can have a chemical injury, a thermal burn, or a mechanical trauma where a foreign body gets shot into the eye.”
What’s worse, the report shows that victims are often children. In fact, 36% were under the age of 15.
Kids may not know better, Dr. Simon notes. “When I was a kid, I would get as close to the explosion as I could until someone yelled at me.”
Now’s the perfect time to book an eye exam, shop for new glasses, or stock up on contact lenses.
Organizations like the National Fire Protection Associationand the National Safety Council recommend leaving all fireworks to the professionals. But that doesn’t stop many people from buying fireworks to impress their friends and neighbors during backyard celebrations and casual neighborhood displays, especially around July Fourth.
If you’re planning to set off fireworks, follow these safety guidelines:
Fortunately for Tommy, his parents’ quick action paid off.
Upon conducting a full dilation exam the next day, Dr. Simon found no damage to Tommy’s retina. A week later, after a continued regimen of steroid drops, Tommy’s eye had healed, the redness had cleared, and the pain was gone. There were no signs of residual damage.
“He was lucky,” Dr. Simon says. “I remember looking up the velocity of a bottle rocket. I think it’s about 100 yards a second. That’s the length of a football field. That’s fast.”
If you suffer a fireworks-related eye injury, seek immediate medical care. Do not rub your eyes or try to remove stuck objects.
And while doctors often recommend rinsing the eye to treat chemical burns, in this case that may not be smart, as some fireworks are made with chemicals that can react with water, Dr. Simon says. Let the emergency personnel or doctor make that call.