Goggles: Paintball and eye injuries

This article appeared on Reuters news service on Tuesday December 7, 1999.
NEW YORK, Dec 07 (Reuters Health) — As the sport of paintballing increases in popularity, the number of eye injuries sustained when players neglect to wear safety goggles is also climbing, warn Indiana ophthalmologists in the December issue of the journal Injury Prevention.

During paintball, a war-like sport played by about one million people in North America, players try to eliminate opponents by shooting them with high-speed paintballs blasted out of compressed air or gas rifles. The paintballs are made from water, chemicals, and dye with a latex or gelatin coat that ruptures on impact and releases colored paint.

According to the new report, there were no cases of paintball-related eye injuries reported to the Indiana Academy of Ophthalmology from June 1992 to June 1996, but 11 cases of paintball-related eye bleeding and swelling occurred between 1996 and 1998, report Drs. John W. Kitchens and Ronald P. Danis, ophthalmologists from the Indiana University School of Medicine in Indianapolis. This accounts for about 4% of yearly eye injuries reported to the state eye injury registry, the investigators note.

“The most important factor in preventing such injuries is the use of goggles or facemasks… which must be worn at all times during play,” they write. “Paintball should be played in a controlled environment with referees to guard against participants removing their eyewear during combat.”

All injured players were men with an average age of 22. While two men were wearing eyewear, none were wearing safety goggles at the time of the eye injury. Bleeding and swelling were the most common injuries, and eyesight was severely affected in all cases. Four players required immediate surgery, and in two cases, eye damage was permanent, according to the report.

“The rise in the proportion of reported injuries in Indiana parallels the rapid growth of participants in this game,” Kitchens and Danis note. “The lack of wear of (eye) protection during unsupervised games or the removal of protection during a game for cleaning of lenses appears to be underlying the vast majority of these injuries.”

SOURCE: Injury Prevention 1999;5:301-302.