Eye injuries in the garden may not be top of mind when weeding and harvesting, but gardeners should be in the habit of taking precautions. To identify the risks to our eyes that gardening poses and share ways to prevent injuries, joining me on the podcast this week is retinal surgeon Dr. C. Kiersten Pollard.
Kiersten is a board-certified ophthalmologist in western Colorado, fellowship-trained in medical and surgical management of diseases of the retina and vitreous. As an ophthalmologist and MIT-trained neuroscientist, she has published research papers and worked in several research laboratories, and has been an assistant instructor at the University of Texas. What she really loves is the personal connection of caring for patients and the satisfaction of fixing ocular problems through surgery.
Dr. Kiersten Pollard is a board-certified ophthalmologist and retinal specialist.
(Photo Credit: David Lester-Willow Pond Photography)
“I treat people with a variety of eye conditions — retinal detachments, macular degeneration, diabetes, and then, of course, trauma,” Kiersten says.
What Kiersten has to share may not be traditional gardening information, but learning how to prevent eye injuries in the garden will enable you to keep on gardening uninterrupted for years to come. We’re talking about your vision — potentially permanent eye damage, and it’s important to not take that for granted.
Kiersten says while people think gardening is not that dangerous, it’s actually physically demanding and there are a lot of things that can hurt you. You probably know this already, and I can attest to this fact too, having had some injuries and close calls myself.
Kiersten listened to joegardener podcast episode 109, “Garden Safety: When Shortcuts Have Consequences,” in which I share an incident in which I reached for a weed without noticing a protruding branch. As you have probably already guessed, the branch poked my eye. It was painful and led to a swollen eye and soreness that lasted for days.
Kiersten says it’s incredibly common for someone to be weeding, bend down or get down on the ground and fail to see a little stick or barb because it’s pointed straight at them. “Sometimes people get lucky and they just get a scratch,” she says. “And sometimes they get really unlucky, and it’ll actually penetrate the eye,” she says.
In organic gardening, there is lots of flora and fauna and bacteria that’s wonderful for the soil and the earth, but horrible for our eye, she says. “So anytime anyone has any kind of ocular injury, it’s just really important to get checked out.”
Wear Eye Protection to Prevent Eye Injuries in the Garden
Before I injured my eye in the garden, never did the thought cross my mind that I should have something on to protect my eyes. When I’m doing things where I can perceive a potential threat — like working with a chainsaw — I grab my safety glasses or sunglasses. But for something as routine as weeding, eye protection did not seem necessary. Boy, did I find out the hard way how wrong I was.
“Having anything on is better than nothing,” Kiersten says. “I’m nearsighted, I wear glasses. I have not had refractive corrective surgery because I always tell my patients, ‘I want something between my eyeballs and the cruel sharp world.’”
When she goes out, she wears really big sunglasses. “And if I’m going to be doing anything, like with a weed whacker or any kind of electronic device outside that could potentially kick something up, I wear protective safety goggles that are like shatter-resistant plastic that go around my sunglasses,” she says.
Your own glasses are not enough because things can get underneath them and around the side, she points out.
When weeding, sunglasses are excellent and have the benefit of protecting your retina from UV radiation, she says.
When people get basal cell carcinoma around their eye, it happens on their lower eyelid, because when outside, that’s where the sun hits, she says. So not only will sunglasses protect the retina and slow down cataract formation, but they’ll also protect you from eyelid cancer.
“But if you’re going to do anything with any kind of motorized device or any chance that you might fall and hit the corner of something, you just want to have a really strong something in the way between your really soft eyeball and the rest of the world.”
“Our orbit is made out of very strong bones in our face, and that’s so that if something hits our face, it’ll hit the orbit and crumple the sinus. Kind of like how the front of a car gets crumpled to take the impact. But if something makes it through and it actually hits your eyeball, your eyeball is just defenseless. It’s a super delicate organ. It doesn’t have any kind of form to it, and it’s really easy for it to get damaged. And once it’s damaged, there’s a lot of things that I can do, but there’s only so much I can do. So prevention is really, really, really key.”
You can’t rule out the fact that there’s some strange angle, some happenstance situation when an object will get around your sunglasses frames.
Kiersten says she takes care of patients who were cutting wood or grinding metal with just their regular eyeglasses or sunglasses on when high-velocity particles get in their eyes. Regular glasses just don’t have enough coverage.
“You really need something that’s going to touch the orbits, so right above your eyebrows and then on your cheekbones and close to the side,” she says. “Because I have seen so many people, they’re grinding a piece of metal and it flies up and goes into their eye and punctures their eye.”
She takes that bacteria-covered object out in the operating room.
Safety goggles are your best protection, but even a pair of sunglasses can prevent injury from flying debris and other eye hazards.
Choose Standardized Safety Glasses
The American National Standards Institute standardizes safety glasses. Any safety glasses that have been standardized for projectile use will say “ANSI” on the side.
“As long as they say that you can be relatively secure and knowing that they’ve been tested and that they’re probably gonna be pretty safe,” Kiersten says.
A starter pair of safety glasses can be as cheap as 99 cents and still protect from a direct shot in the eye. A step up from the 99 centers are sunglasses, which are typically made from shatter-resistant plastic or polycarbonate and can take a pretty good hit, she says.
Kiersten encourages finding ANSI-approved safety glasses that provide full coverage, protecting the eye not just from head-on dangers but from the sides, top and bottom as well. Look for one with fog-resistance and a gasket that will form a seal. Even the clear-lensed versions may have UV protection — just check out the specs before buying.
When Kiersten is weed-whacking, mowing, pruning — any activity that creates projectiles — she wears this type of safety glasses.
The American Academy of Ophthalmology has a guide on the best safety glasses for your occupation or activity. The Occupational Safety and Health Administration also has standards, and the HR department of your employer has access to those, Kiersten notes.
Sports, from basketball to pickleball, lead to many ocular injuries, so Kiersten encourages always using the appropriate protective eyewear.
Always Carry Tools With the Pointed End Away From Your Face
When using garden shears, or shears of any kind, hold the point down and away from you. Kiersten has seen patients after they had been walking with shears and tripped. In that situation, you’d rather you stab your foot than your eye, she says.
Always hold the pointed end of shears and other tools away from your face while using them or walking.
The Gardening Eye Injuries You Don’t Expect
String trimmers, lawnmowers and electric tools can kick up rocks, gravel and even wood at a high velocity, and this is very dangerous for an unprotected eye.
“Sometimes it’ll just hit the eye and bounce off, and sometimes it’ll puncture the eye,” Kiersten says. “Even if it hits the eye and bounces off, that can still cause quite a lot of damage. You can bleed in the front part of your eye, the iris can get ripped.”
If your eye gets hit hard enough, the retina can get “whiplash,” damaging the delicate photoreceptors that allow you to see. The retina is part of the brain, she notes. “It’s brain tissue. So if it gets damaged, it cannot regenerate.”
Blunt trauma can also cause bleeding in the back of the eye, requiring surgery to remove the blood.
Electric tools we use in the garden can also malfunction and even explode.
“I’ve seen a lot of that as well,” she says. “It’s kind of like freak accidents. You want to make sure you care for all your equipment. If it needs to be oiled or stored in a specific place, you really want to do that because it’ll keep it working, but also it limits the chance that it’s going to malfunction and explode in your face or your hands.”
Know where your toddler, your dogs and your cats are when using equipment in the garden, she adds.
Ophthalmology vs. Optometry
Optometrists give eye exams, provide prescriptions for corrective lenses and can address many of the most common vision problems. However, while optometrists are doctors, they are not medical doctors. An ophthalmologist is a medical doctor who can treat eye diseases and injuries with medical or surgical procedures.
“If you’re having pain, vision loss — anything where you’ve had something happen to your eye — you want to see an eye surgeon, and that’s an ophthalmologist,” Kiersten says.
A general comprehensive ophthalmologist goes through four years of undergraduate study, four years of medical school, and four years of ophthalmology surgical residency.
Then there are specialist ophthalmologists, like Kiersten, who is a retinal specialist.
“I did all the training for general ophthalmology, and then I did two additional years to be able to treat conditions in the back of the eye,” she says. “So the retina, the vitreous, things like that. Hopefully, you don’t need to see me, because usually, that means something really bad happened.”
She explains that it is important to see an ophthalmologist rather than an optometrist after an eye injury because optometrists don’t really evaluate ocular trauma as part of their training.
“Ocular trauma can be really subtle,” she says. “It’s a tiny organ that can have microscopic injuries that can lead to severe vision loss. So you want someone who’s done that four years of surgical ophthalmic surgery training to look at all the little nooks and crannies and make sure that nothing is being missed.”
Kiersten knows first-hand the valuable work that optometrists do and how many patients they help because her father is an optometrist. Optometrists are a part of the eye care team that helps patients with non-emergency vision needs, Kiersten says, but for trauma or surgical problems, patients need a surgeon (an ophthalmologist).
Likewise, a general practitioner doesn’t have much training in evaluating the eye.
“Even if they look at you with that little microscope in the ER, they can really only see like the very front of your eye,” she says. “It’s really, really hard to look inside the eye. That’s why ophthalmology residency is four years.”
So if an ER doctor or primary care physician says you should see an ophthalmologist, do it.
Kiersten points out that not every hospital will have an ophthalmologist on hand, but if you go to a hospital that is a level-one trauma center, the ER will have every medical specialty available. “If you go there, there is an ophthalmologist who can come in and see you,” she says.
A CT scan shows an intraocular foreign body, a metallic object, inside of the left eye of a patient who was not wearing tactical glasses or protective eyewear while handling a projectile device. This type of injury can occur when using a weed whacker because it can kick up metal, gravel, or organic matter that can travel at high velocity and puncture the eye.
When to Get Checked Out
If your eye is hurting or you have decreased vision, it’s time to get checked out.
Because you have two eyes, if one is injured and the other is not, you may not realize it because your brain will switch over to the good eye, Kiersten says. She advises covering one eye and evaluating your vision.
Ask yourself: Can I see my entire field of vision, or are there parts missing? Is there a shadow or a curtain that’s getting larger? A shadow that’s getting larger can be a retinal detachment. Floaters in the eye can be blood.
Then cover the other eye and do the same.
“It’s important to know which eye it is so that you can communicate it to the people taking care of you to help streamline figuring out how serious the injury is,” Kiersten says.
“When the front of the eye, the cornea, gets injured, it has so many nerve endings, it hurts so bad,” she points out. “I always tell patients the hierarchy of pain that I see as a doctor, it goes kidney stones, childbirth, corneal abrasion. Those are the most painful things that can happen to you. I have never had a kidney stone, but I have had a baby and I have had a corneal abrasion.”
Meanwhile, the back of the eye has no pain receptors, so patients with a back-of-the-eye injury unfortunately wait to seek care. If you get an ophthalmologist on the phone, he or she can tell you if your symptoms can wait a few weeks for an appointment or if you need to come in right away.
If your safety glasses are kept in a convenient place, you’ll be more likely to use them. I keep frequently used small tools in a mailbox right in my garden — and stash safety gear here as well.
What do you do to prevent eye injuries in the garden? Let us know in the comments below.
Links & Resources
Some product links in this guide are affiliate links. See full disclosure below.
Episode 109: Garden Safety: When Shortcuts Have Consequences
joegardenerTV YouTube: How to Stay Organized in the Garden
joegardener Online Gardening Academy™: Popular courses on gardening fundamentals; managing pests, diseases & weeds; seed starting and more.
joegardener Online Gardening Academy Organic Vegetable Gardening: My new premium online course. The course is designed to be a comprehensive guide to starting, growing, nurturing and harvesting your favorite vegetables, no matter what you love to eat, no matter where you live, no matter your level of gardening experience.
joegardener Online Gardening Academy Master Seed Starting: Everything you need to know to start your own plants from seed — indoors and out.
joegardener Online Gardening Academy Beginning Gardener Fundamentals: Essential principles to know to create a thriving garden.
joegardener Online Gardening Academy Growing Epic Tomatoes: Learn how to grow epic tomatoes with Joe Lamp’l and Craig LeHoullier.
joegardener Online Gardening Academy Master Pests, Diseases & Weeds: Learn the proactive steps to take to manage pests, diseases and weeds for a more successful garden with a lot less frustration. Just $47 for lifetime access!
joegardener Online Gardening Academy Perfect Soil Recipe Master Class: Learn how to create the perfect soil environment for thriving plants.
American Academy of Ophthalmology: Workplace Eye Injuries Cost Time, Money, and Vision
American Academy of Ophthalmology: What Is an Ophthalmologist vs Optometrist?
Milorganite® – Our podcast episode sponsor and Brand Partner of joegardener.com
Disclosure: Some product links in this guide are affiliate links, which means we get a commission if you purchase. However, none of the prices of these resources have been increased to compensate us, and compensation is not an influencing factor on their inclusion here. The selection of all items featured in this post and podcast was based solely on merit and in no way influenced by any affiliate or financial incentive, or contractual relationship. At the time of this writing, Joe Lamp’l has professional relationships with the following companies who may have products included in this post and podcast: Corona Tools, Milorganite, Soil3, Territorial Seed Company, Earth’s Ally, Proven Winners ColorChoice, Farmer’s Defense, Heirloom Roses and Dramm. These companies are either Brand Partners of joegardener.com and/or advertise on our website. However, we receive no additional compensation from the sales or promotion of their product through this guide. The inclusion of any products mentioned within this post is entirely independent and exclusive of any relationship.
