Bifocal Glasses Reading Safety

Bifocals are glasses that correct for both far and near vision. Many occupations and working environments require that you wear safety glasses while you work. If your work involves reading or seeing up close, you may be required to have a pair of safety bifocal glasses. You can also purchase safety glasses for use at home if you are doing any work that may involve the chance of lenses being impacted.

Significance

• If you are working in a laboratory, a manufacturing facility, an office that is part of a factory or lab, in lawn care, with chemicals, in construction, in sports or in a medical setting, you may be required to wear safety glasses.
  The Occupational Safety and Health Administration, or OSHA, is the governing body of the U.S. Department of Labor that approves and determines the standards for safety glasses. ANSI (American National Standards Institute) publishes and supports safety glass issues. OSHA and ANSI allow two types of safety lenses, basic impact and high impact.
  Basic impact lenses must pass a test to show lenses won't crack, chip or break.
  High impact rating requires frames and lenses to be tested together. The glasses cannot break, crack or chip, and the lenses can not come away from the frames.
  Most jobs require basic impact safety, which is a Z87 rating. If necessary, high impact Z87+ may be required by some employers.

Types

• Safety glasses are made of lenses that are specially designed to resist impact. Safety frames are designed to hold lenses in place better than everyday glasses. Safety lenses can be made of glass, plastic or polycarbonate, but most are made from polycarbonate, also called CR-39. The lenses can be made for just distance, for just reading or for both combined, called bifocals.
  Bifocal safety lenses can be made with lines or without. No-line bifocals are more expensive, and some companies will either not pay for, or require you to pay for, the difference in cost.
  Bifocal safety glasses can also be made as photochromic lenses that change from dark to light. If your job requires you to be outside part of the day, these lenses are a nice option. These lenses are also more expensive than standard safety bifocals.

Benefits

• Having bifocals in your safety glasses allows you to see up close. After the age of 40, many people find that reading small print or seeing fine detail gets more challenging. Adding a bifocal to glasses lets you have the benefit of being able to see out in the distance and look down through the bifocal when you need to see up close, usually at about 18 to 22 inches.

Other Options

• Specialty lens manufacturers like Bausch and Lomb make visor-style magnifiers that can be worn over safety glasses. These additional vision aids have the benefit of being lightweight and can significantly magnify, allowing for occupational and recreational needs that include very high detail work.

Considerations

• Bifocal safety glasses help with computer work, too. In some cases, no-line bifocals work better when using a computer because they allow you to see at multiple focal points. If no-lines are not a covered option, you may consider trifocals, which have an intermediate power at about arm's length. Most companies will pay for trifocals as well as bifocals, even when they will not cover no-lines.