Short Sighted

There’s a reason eye protection is one of the most commonly cited safety precautions a technician can take. Ted Harms, a licensed technician at Lethbridge Husky, found that out the hard way.

On Feb. 18, 2000, while replacing the lower ball-joints on an older rear-wheel-drive vehicle, he decided to use a cold chisel to open the pinch-pin locking mechanism.

“I just took a hammer and a chisel, like everybody’s done a thousand times, and the first hit was just a line-up tap, but right away, ‘Ow!’ I felt something in my eye,” he says. A tiny piece of metal had broken loose from the ball joint and plunged through the lens of his eye, where it became embedded.

“I washed my eye out right away, and it felt fine, didn’t hurt. It looked a little red but you couldn’t see that there was anything in there,” says Harms. “Within a half hour, though, I could see a black dot obscuring my vision, and my eye just kept watering. I thought, ‘Well, that can’t be good.'”

It wasn’t. He had surgery the same day to stitch up his damaged cornea and stop the leaking fluid. Two days later, another surgery was scheduled to remove the metal. Now Harms has 20 per cent vision in that eye. Although he may be eligible for a lens implant, his vision will never be perfect. He’ll have to choose to be either near-sighted or far-sighted.

He’s not bitter about the loss, but aware of the irony of the situation.

“At the time, I was the only one who wore protective glasses in the shop. I was always careful that way, especially in any situation where metal is flying around. One time I forgot to put them on, and I didn’t get away with it.”

His advice to others is to stop coming up with reasons not to wear protective eye wear.

“Chances are one in a zillion that a small piece of metal is going to jump right into your eye, but if it does, it really sucks,” he says.”When someone tells me they don’t wear protective eyewear, I tell them it’s unfortunate they won’t wear it until something happens to them. It’s one of those things you seem to learn the hard way. If I had a choice between a million dollars and keeping an eye, I’d take the eye any day.”