On Saturday, October 25, 2008 at 11:57:30 AM UTC-4, Peter Hucker wrote:
I am the unfortunate person in this situation. I have gotten solder splash in my eye, right in the center of my pupil in my right eye. Let me tell you, it is not fun.
At my job, i solder capacitors onto parts that are wrapped in copper foil. we have to solder the ends of them also. after about 3 months of soldering hundreds of parts per day, I finally got solder splashed into my eye. I saw it fly at my eye, and when it hit, it had a darkening effect where the light was shadowed out for a quick second. Happened in April or May of 2022.
At first it stings, then it goes away after a few minutes. feels like someone poked you in the eye basically. It literally wasnt too bad at the time. I kept on working after it felt better and all was good. Went home and took a nap for an hour, then woke up and wiped my eyelid to clear up my eyes. Apparently, I still had the piece of solder in my eye. which scratched up my eye. That hurt 10x worse than the splash did. 3 days of a red eye followed, but then everything was fine. Fast forward to mid September and i get Covid. finally got rid of it early October. Had a cough the whole time, which were very hard coughs, harder than I've ever coughed before. 3 days after I was allowed to go back to work, I come home and take a nap for an hour. I woke up, and all of a sudden had double vision. I looked online and it looked like maybe i coughed so hard that i blew a blood vessel in my eye, so that's what i assumed it was. My right eye sees a distorted image. bad enough that when i look at peoples' faces, they look like Sloth from Goonies. Not his face, but the spacing of his eyes, where one is down and over from where it should be. Well days and weeks went by, and it got slightly better, so i assumed it in fact was a blood vessel. Then i started noticing a circle that showed up when i blinked. Then it hit me...that dot was exactly the same size as the solder that hit my eye. So it took about 6 months for the effect to happen. My guess is that it healed, and the distorted vision is because Im looking thru scar tissue.
Every straight line is wavy when seen thru my right eye. I see 2 of everything, but its not usually 2 objects unless its far away, its like every object has 2 edges around it, similar to using those old red and blue 3D glasses but without the colors. I can still read, but it takes longer to comprehend usually. For the most part, my left eye kinda takes over or overpowers a bit so i do see things mostly clear because of that, but its still a struggle. I have also noticed that my right eye does have a small spot that is a bit more blurry than the rest of the dot, so it will be interesting to see how it goes when i need an eye test to renew my drivers license in 3 years. I unfortunately did not report the injury to my job, but will be asking what i can do on Monday. Our human resources guy left and the old hr person took over again, but they are behind so i was waiting a bit to talk to her. But i had another situation come up with my pay so i have to talk to her anyways, so i figured i kill 2 birds with one stone. I doubt there is anything that I can do, but I did tell one person when it happened so i do have a witness of when it happened, and i did tell people what happened when my vision got distorted since it slowed down my soldering at my job since the capacitors are supposed to be soldered onto the part straight, and i cant see a straight line unless i close my right eye. I do use a magnifying glass now to block my face from the solder, but I hate wearing safety glasses, which was why I didn't report my injury in the first place, I was dumb, and should have reported it. Lesson learned. Hopefully, My job will end up paying for lasek surgery or something to correct it, if it can be corrected. I have not been to a doctor yet either, as funds have been really tight and my health insurance choice got messed up when i selected it last summer at work, so my insurance won't cover anything until I spend $5000 out of my pocket.
But yes, it definitely sucks. Wear eye protection or use a big magnifying glass when you solder. Also, I want to correct the wording on the previous posts. I wouldn't consider solder to "explode" but it splatters from air bubbles in the solder, or if the flux is too cold sometimes. Closest thing I can think of is, similar to a balloon covered in shaving cream popping, and the shaving cream flies in every direction. Solder will indeed do that. Also, we use Lead free solder at my job if that matters.
But to all who read this, Follow safety rules and protect yourself if there are no rules in place. I almost got solder in my eye a second time but got lucky and blinked at the right time, so it hit my eyelid . I had forgotten to use my magnifying glass that day until that happened.