What can optometrists do to prevent eye injuries?

Harold Godwinson, Harold II, the last Anglo-Saxon King of England, died in 1066 from an eye injury inflicted during the Battle of Hastings, an event immortalised in the Bayeux tapestry. Without doubt, it was not the first occupational eye injury but is one of the best remembered. Harold did not have the option of wearing protective goggles, as glasses were not invented until 1486 or thereabouts, but perhaps he should have put his visor down. This is still a lesson not yet learned. In a series of 9,390 eye injuries seen at the Royal Victorian Eye and Ear Hospital over an 18-month period, two-thirds were not wearing eye protection at the time of the injury. In ancient times, the risk for eye injury was limited to those caused by assault, warfare, chiselling stone and accidents with sharp objects and tree branches. The industrial revolution, which began to have its full effects from the mid-19th Century, raised the stakes with powered machinery, furnaces, hot metal, steam, grinders and chemicals providing new risks for eye