The most common cause of eye infection is the rubbing of one’s eye with an unwashed finger. If your eye itches, irrigate with an eyewash solution (aka, artificial tears). It is recommended that you wash your hands for at least 20 seconds prior to using eye drops.
Eye infections can present in multiple ways. These include conjunctivitis (pink eye), discharge around the eyes (aka, “goop”, which may range in color from clear to dark yellow), and discolored or scaly lids.
Persistent itching is usually a sign of eye irritation, not an eye infection. It can be caused by particles such as pollen, for example. In the workplace, airborne dust from plastic or metal machining operations may cause this irritation.
A burning sensation is usually a form of irritation due to a gas or vapor; take this also as a lung damage warning sign and put some distance between yourself and the source of irritation.
For many people, the phrase “eye protection” means wearing safety glasses. This is an oversimplification that can have tragic consequences. Safety glasses are essential protection, but they serve to guard the eyeball from puncture by something such as a projectile thrown off a machine or a prominence you inadvertently move your face into. They don’t protect from airborne dust, human fingers jammed up behind them, solvent fumes, or chemical splash.
Nor do they totally protect against objects coming at the eye from a particularly steep angle. If you read the owner’s manual for any lawn mower, you will read that safety glasses are required (so is hearing protection). Yet even with safety glasses on, it is possible for debris to fly up on a trajectory that is behind the safety glass lens. The good news here is it is almost certain to skip across the eye rather than be driven into it. But think of this example of how something can get into, or at least on, your eye(s) even with safety glasses on.
How do people react in such cases? They wipe “it” out of their eye with a finger. And then the infection games begin. Or, thinking to be smart about it, they use eye drops from a bottle that has been picked up with unwashed hands or stored in an unclean location.
The DIY care for eye irritation or apparent infection is to stop whatever you are doing, thoroughly wash your hands, then use eye drops, an eye irrigator, or an eye wash to cleanse the eye. If it’s something that just seems to develop with no apparent cause, it is probably an infection. In that case:
- Don’t mess around waiting for it to get better. Make an appointment with an ophthalmologist (not an optometrist) as soon as you can get in.
- Try to remember if you “removed the sleep from my eye while driving in” or in some other way put a finger to an eye.
- When you get home, change any pillowcases, wash cloths, and towels. These are best cleaned with one-third the normal amount of recommended detergent plus half a cup of white vinegar (for fabrics other than white, use less vinegar). Do not dry these items completely (use low heat and remove when damp). Along with using one-third of the detergent, this will make them soft without the chemicals used in commercial fabric softeners.
- If your eye seems fine in the morning, then acts up again once you’re at work, there’s something at work causing a problem. And it’s probably not an infection that you have.
- If your eye is still bothering you in the morning, keep the appointment with the ophthalmologist and continue to use eye drops (liquid tears) or similar.
If you find yourself needing to use eye drops more than once, it may be best to toss out the bottle of whatever you were using and get a new one. That bottle may be the source of the infection. You could have contaminated it by picking it up with dirty hands, or by leaving it on the sink top, which is directly across from the toilet you flush without putting the lid down first.
Protecting your eyes from infection is mainly a question of hygiene. You can do a sort of lockout/tagout to solve this. But instead of identifying sources of energy to isolate, you identify sources of pathogens to isolate.
Even our best efforts can fail; if that happens, you need to switch from protecting your eyes from infection to protecting your eyes with infection. It is better to overreact and have an ophthalmologist give you a clean bill of eye health than to wait until the situation progresses beyond the point where treatment can be effective.
