Checking and using the eyewash

Purpose

To prove, before a session, that the eyewash provision the classification rubric assumes actually works and can be reached; and to run it, when it is needed, without losing the minute that matters most.

When to use it

The check runs once at the start of every session in which a container is opened. The use runs the instant anything reaches an eye, ahead of every other action in the room, including reading this page.

Before you start

You should already have read what “eyewash provision within reach” means for a domestic room, on protecting yourself, and have the first aid quick reference already read rather than waiting to be read. That page is the authority for what to do and for how long; this one is the drill for making it happen in your own room.

In the room: a tap you can reach from the wet bench; sterile eyewash bottles, sealed and in date, as a bridge to it; the safety data sheet for every product open today; and a telephone with the numbers already written down.

!What a workplace standard asks for, and what a kitchen is

The recognised standard for plumbed emergency eyewash asks for flushing fluid to both eyes for fifteen minutes, a valve that opens in a second and stays open, a fitting reachable within ten seconds, and tepid fluid at 16 to 38 °C. Almost no home darkroom meets it. The translation is the one the layout page made when it put the sink beside the wet bench: the tap is your eyewash, and the check below is how you know it is one.

Procedure

The check, before the session

1. Stand where you will be working and walk to the tap with your eyes shut. If you cannot do it at walking pace, move what is in the way or move the session.
2. Run the tap and set a gentle, tepid flow. A jet is not an irrigation and cold water will not be tolerated for a quarter of an hour.
3. Confirm the sink is clear enough to put a face over — no soaking graduate, no tray, no washing up.
4. Check the sterile bottles: seals unbroken, dates in the future, and enough of them that a long irrigation is arithmetically possible. A container whose seal has been broken is not kept for reuse.
5. Confirm the data sheets are where you said they were and the telephone numbers are written down rather than remembered.

The use, when something reaches an eye

6. Get to the tap. Do not finish the pour, do not put anything down carefully, and do not look for this page.
7. Water into the eye, gently, at once, and hold the lid open. The eye closes hard against a splash and the reflex protects the wrong surface; somebody else holding it open is better than you doing it.
8. Keep it running for the full fifteen minutes the first aid reference works to — timed on a clock rather than judged, because it will feel far longer than it needs to and stopping early is the commonest failure there is.
9. If you are wearing a contact lens, take it out if it comes out easily. Rinsing does not stop for it.
10. Have somebody else telephone while you are still rinsing, and read section 4 of the sheet for the product. Rinsing and calling are not sequential.
11. Go for medical advice with the container or a photograph of its label. A chemical in the eye is not a wait-and-see injury.
12. Come back to the bench afterwards. The spill waited.
13. Write it down while it is fresh.

How you know it worked

• You reached the tap with your eyes shut, before the session, at walking pace.
• The flow was tepid and gentle rather than cold and hard, and the sink was empty enough to use.
• The sterile bottles are sealed and in date, and there are enough of them to bridge to running water.
• After a use: the clock, not the feeling, ended the irrigation; somebody telephoned during it rather than after it; and the product went with the person.
• The notebook carries what the substance was, how strong, and how long the rinse actually ran.

If a step fails

Step 1, the tap cannot be reached in a few seconds. This is the one item on the opening list that stops a session outright. Clear the route or work at a bench where the route is clear.

Step 2, the tap runs only cold or only hot. A cold irrigation will be cut short and a hot one cannot be used at all. Fill a clean vessel with tepid water and stand it at the bench as well, and treat the mixer as a fault to fix before the next session.

Step 4, the seals are broken or the dates have passed. They are not provision any more. Replace them, and until then treat the tap as the whole of the arrangement rather than assuming a bottle is behind it.

Step 5, you are working alone. Say so out loud before you start: tell somebody in the house what you are doing and for how long. If a splash happens, get the water on first and telephone with the other hand, on speaker, still rinsing.

Step 8, a litre bottle runs out. One litre will not run for fifteen minutes and it was never meant to. Use it to start the irrigation on the way to the tap, and finish at the tap.

Step 8, the eye stops hurting after two minutes. That is the moment the procedure is usually abandoned and the reason it is written down. Keep going.

Step 11, the irritation is still there the next morning. That is not settling down. Get medical help, which is what the precautionary statement for persistent eye irritation exists to say.

What to record

For the check: nothing, unless something was not true — a blocked route, a cold tap, an expired bottle — in which case one line, with what you did about it. For a use: the product name exactly as it appears on the container, the concentration, the quantity, the route and the time it happened, how long the irrigation ran, who you spoke to and what they said. Those first five are what whoever you telephone will ask for, and hunting for them costs the minutes you do not have.