You may often hear talk about safety glasses. We often wonder where would one use them, and to what extent they might be used. Safety eyewear helps to protect the most delicate part of the body i.e. our eyes. Unlike simple goggles, safety goggles have higher resistance standards, which can used in daily non-conventional jobs. The American National Standards Institute (ANSI) has laid down some specifications and tests for the varied glasses, so we will look at them at some length now.
ANSI Description of the Safety Glass Protective Eyewear
According to ANSI, there are a couple of tests and standards for particular the glasses which it has to have to be put into use.
First of all, the hardness or more precisely, the impact of the particular glass is tested separately. Which means no frame is attached to it during a test. Glasses given without prescriptions are generally thinner than the ones given with a prescription. So we should generally prefer prescription glasses only. Recently, glasses thinner than prescribed are allowed but only if they meet the impact standards as specified. There’s an impact testing for all safety glasses. The test includes a 1 inch diameter steel ball to be dropped on the glass and it should not crack or chip, let alone break. This is an example of a basic impact test, whereas in a high impact test, a quarter inch diameter steel bowl is dropped on the lens at 150 feet/second. The same rules apply in this test too.
Assessment of the Safety Glass
There are various signs one can read to identify the glass genuinely. There is a “+” plus mark on safety glasses that have high impact qualities. It means that these lenses have passed the high impact test mentioned earlier. These glasses are safe to use in various ways for protection.
One more sign to check for is the “V” and “S” signs on the lens. The V mark states that the lens is photo chromatic whereas the S sign states the glass is having a special tint to it. Shaded safety glasses are used where protection is needed and high light is produced. For example, electric welders use these glasses to protect their eyes. The tint ranges are from a mere 1.5-3 to maybe 10-14 for very high intense electric welding.
Testing for the lenses used in protective eye gear also undergoes the same process as mentioned above and also bears the same marks for the genuine.
You can also asses the quality of the non-prescribed safety glasses by checking for basic impact markings as Z87 and for high impact ones as Z87+. These are basics for checking of the non-prescribed glasses. Also, for prescribed ones, the mark Z87-2 is checked. These markings have to be permanent and no exception is allowed here.
With this basic knowledge of tests and markings safety glasses you are sure to have enough information on buying the perfect eye gear, the next time you buy one for yourself.
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