Sports Eye Safety


April is Sports Eye Safety Month

This April we are acknowledging sports eye safety. We are informing and urging athletes to wear protective eye wear when playing a sport. Sports provide good exercise for maintaining proper weight, improve strength and coordination, and helps build lifelong healthy habits and attitude. But, there are health risks in playing sports including eye injuries; the vast majority of which are preventable.

About 42,000 sports eye injuries occur every year. The majority of the victims are children. Injuries include corneal abrasions, eyelid bruises, and internal eye injuries, such as retinal detachments and internal bleeding. many of these injuries lead to vision loss and permanent blindness. For young athletes, baseball and basketball account for the largest number of injuries. Little league pitchers may throw the ball up to 70 mph, which is fast enough to break bones and do serious damage to the eye. In basketball, you cannot prevent contact with flying elbows or fingers. Many other popular sports, such as tennis, soccer, football, paintball, golf, water sports, lacrosse and hockey also put unprotected players at risk for a serious eye injury.

Unfortunately, glasses and contact lenses do not offer enough protection for sports. Specific protective eye wear is available for almost all sports. When properly fitted, eye wear does not hinder performance and can prevent 90 percent of sports eye injuries. Most protective eye wear including goggles, face shields and guards should be made of poly-carbonate plastic.

Our optical shop, Woodbury Eyewear, has a wide variety of protective eye wear for almost every sport with fashionable new styles!

It's the Law in New Jersey
"It is mandated that any child that wears corrective eyeglasses while participating in racquetball squash, tennis, women's lacrosse, basketball, women's field hockey, badminton, paddle ball soccer volleyball, baseball, football,or softball, sponsored by a school, community or government agency, shall be required to wear protective eye wear that meets the frames standards of the American Society for Testing Materials (ASTM) F803 and lens standards of the American National Standards Institute (ANSI) Z87.11"

Lets enjoy the spring games, not spend them as an emergency!


This message was brought to you by Friedberg Eye Associates and the American Academy of Ophthalmology.

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