Good afternoon to all IDI employees,
As you all know, IDI requires eye protection to be worn 100% of the time while on job sites. IDI provides eye protection such as safety glasses and/or goggles at no cost to our employees. We rolled out this 100% eye protection policy in March of 2015 which was 6 years ago. We have had tremendous results with this policy in place as we have not had a single eye related injury requiring medical care since this went into effect. Prior to the 100% eye protection policy going into effect, IDI required safety glasses for various tasks, but not all the time, and we would get a few debris in the eye type medical injuries a year. We also had 1 very serious eye related injury in January of 2015 involving an employee using a hammer and a very small metal fragment broke away from the face of the hammer and darted directly into our employee's eye, causing the need for immediate emergency surgery. Fortunately, the employee did not lose his eye.
If you are a prescription glasses wearer, you need to keep in mind that prescription glasses are not impact resistant and can shatter if struck by a flying object such as a fastener pin. Prescription glasses do not meet the American National Standards Institute (ANSI) requirements for eye protection on construction job sites. Also, prescription safety glasses typically do not have side shield protection. The following are a few options to help prescription glass wearers to meet the 100% eye protection requirement. We provide over-the-spectacle or OTS safety glasses to wear over prescription glasses. If you need a pair of the OTS safety glasses, just request them from your Superintendent and you will be provided with a pair. Another option that many employees already do is to buy prescription safety glasses. If you are going this route, please talk to your eye doctor or prescription safety glasses provider to ensure the prescription safety glasses are ANSI Z87.1 approved. Also, you would need to ensure that your prescription safety glasses have side shield protection or that they are the wrap around style. You could take a pair of our safety glasses with you to the eye doctor or provider to help describe this. It is my understanding that you can purchase prescription safety glasses at a reasonable or very low cost through your group medical insurance vision plan as I have been told this by many employees who have gone this route.
