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Eye Injuries


Odd Job

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I personally have taken a BB to my eye. It was rebound from target shooting with a KWA Glock 19 on green gas in my friends back garden. I was standing off to the side of him and the BB bounced back off the fence as his missed the target and hit me in my right eye. There was a lot of pain and a few panicked people.

 

The result? A trip to A+E, a scratched cornea and a 2 weeks worth of eyedrops. I felt silly and now I wear protection even when plinking. My sight now is perfect, although I was practicing my left handed shooting for a few days after :P

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Two years ago, before our group adopted full seal goggles as the standard, I had a .2 bb fired from approx. 60 ft at 400 fps sneak over my shooting glasses while lowcrawling.

 

I was very painful, and I did lose vison for approx 30 mins (in both eyes mind you what with the welling tears and such) but sustained nothing more than a nasty brused eyelid and a minor cut above the eye.

 

BTW we use high grade ammo and mesh goggles (Bug Eyez - Chainsaw saftey gogles) and have never had a problem since.

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You know, the FSS did do tests, I'm sure I read it somewhere ;)

You may have heard of the 1.35J limit?

According to the FSS it takes more than 1.35J to penetrate the eyeball (although people from NI apparently have stronger eyeballs at 2J)

YAY!!!

 

+1 on it's way for that! ;)

 

Seriously, people recite this stuff by rote until they actually stop paying attention to it.

If you READ the Firearm Act, it specifies that a shot at less than 1ft/lb is considered to "be unable to penetrate any part of the body including the eye".

I might have got the wording wrong but the document specifically mentions the fact that a 1.35J shot cannot be considered capable of penetrating an eye.

 

I would have thought Minimiman would be on the ball about that. :waggle:

;)

 

FWIW, besides penetrating injuries, I know somebody who was hit in the eye by a shotgun pellet and, while it didn't penetrate his eye, it DID get into his ocular cavity, somewhere behind his eye.

As you can imagine, at first the injury was such that this wasn't noticed but weeks later he was finding it painful to move his eye around and that was when the pellet was discovered lodged behind his eye.

 

Can I get an "Ewwwwww!"? ;)

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Yup, here's an eeeew!

Good post, you've helped Xaccers to clear that up well.

 

As for incidents, a fellow member of Team Electrowerkz's goggles got shot out once and a bb cut his eyelid. It looked pretty nasty and we thought the worst, but it was just a surface cut on the lid, and when he heard that, he grabbed a new (and different make) pair of goggles and jumped straight back into the game!!!

 

I hope a full penetration never occurs. 1.35J not being able to do it makes me much happier, since Electro is 1J max!!!

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Gotta say, I reckon ROF should be considered too.

 

To use an insane example, I bet that airsoft M134 could make a right mess of somebody if they got in it's way for more than a few seconds.

 

Same thing applies to eyes. One shot might be OK but if you got hit by 2 or more while your eye was still compressed from the first impact it could still do a lot of damage, even without penetrating.

 

I've never been shot in the eye by an airsoft BB but I have had comparable injuries. The main thing is that the shock makes your eye numb and it refuses to move or focus for a while and that is fookin scary!

 

Not as scary as the lathe operator I took to hospital who had an 18" long length of swarf stuck straight through his eye like a corkscrew though. :doctor:

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About ten years ago whilst mucking about in a friends back garden with a load of springers, I saw a mate take one right on the edge of his eyelid :o

 

It split it right open, there was a fair bit of blood but no permanant damage, so as soon as I started playing properly, quality eye protection was one of my first priorities :P

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i just cant imagine a bb just going into the eye without leaving any visible marks, i would expect (with a gun firing around 300+) a large chunck to be blown off or just a big whole where the bb entered such as when you shoot an apple.

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A girl at my school was shot in the eye by a UTG Shotty when he popped around a corner at her house and shot and hit her in the eye. She couldn't see for about a week. And during that week couldn't sleep lying down as the doctors said the blood would dry where the wound was and she wouldn't be able to see for the rest of her life!

 

It was really scary here eye had a huge black mark in the white area below her pupil. Very very lucky she was!

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hmm i heard in the news some kid got shot in the eye by a paintball gun.. drive by.. yea its not airsoft but... yea...

 

its on the news a few months ago.. kid had a choice... Surgery or let it stay.. i believe he was blind in that damaged eye..

 

i got hit by a 203 shell pointblack on my eye section... but luckly i had my goggles on! =D thanks to the Blackhawk spec ops.. there wasnt even any bb marks or anything on the lense!! (after i rubbbed it off of course ;) )

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hmm i heard in the news some kid got shot in the eye by a paintball gun.. drive by.. yea its not airsoft but... yea...

 

its on the news a few months ago.. kid had a choice... Surgery or let it stay.. i believe he was blind in that damaged eye..

 

i got hit by a 203 shell pointblack on my eye section... but luckly i had my goggles on! =D  thanks to the Blackhawk spec ops.. there wasnt even any bb marks or anything on the lense!! (after i rubbbed it off of course ;) )

Indeed it is not airsoft.

 

Paintballs travel at the same speed as airsoft (300fps) but the energy of a paintball gun is nearer 13 loules, rather than the 1 we run at.

 

i just cant imagine a bb just going into the eye without leaving any visible marks, i would expect (with a gun firing around 300+) a large chunck to be blown off or just a big whole where the bb entered such as when you shoot an apple.

 

Simple fact is the energy that a BB has is not lethal and does not penetrate. The eye is actually quite a resiliant organ, as has been shown in the previous posts. Interestingly the Home Office is more concerned with injuries to areas of the skin where arteries are close to the surface, much more vulnerable than the eye.

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Interestingly the Home Office is more concerned with injuries to areas of the skin where arteries are close to the surface, much more vulnerable than the eye.

A fair point.

I guess the problem is that you can damage an eye due to bleeding, scratching or muscle damage without actually penetrating it.

Penetration, as a criteria, is much more suited to assessing the potential for lethality after shooting somebody in the neck, for example, and opening an artery.

 

But then, I guess that IS the whole point of defining "lethal".

 

It would seem that, with respect to eyes, you can ruin one without penetrating it.

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377FPS is the figure i've heard thrown about for the ability to penetrate "eye gristle." I think thats the 1.35J isn't it?

 

1.35J is closer to 381fps, but that just minor nitpicking. The home office assessment IIRC had 1.35 J as below the power needed to penetrate soft tissue (including the eye) with 2-3J as the power needed to cause more than 'trivial' injury, however it is the 1.35j that's the point for it to be considered an air weapon.

 

Now I would consider any long-lasting/permanent eye-damage more than trivial, so this backs up minimimans statement that the home office assessment is more focussed (no pun intended) on skin injuries.

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If you have a dig about and look at the lethality issue, the 1ftlb, or 1.35 J figure for lethality was based on very old testing done with metal darts into ply board, hardly a representative test for lethality from a plastic round BB.

 

The latest testing for lethality was done in Ireland where the 4j figure for lethality was introduced. Anything over 4J needs a firearms cert there.

 

The eye, although damaged relatively easily by cuts or severe impacts is a stable organ. I have not heard of anybody loosing their sight through impact from an airsoft BB, at any velocity, let alone a BB going through the eye and causing further damage.

 

Just goes to show how safe airsoft actually is :D

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Another couple of very useful tidbits of info there minimiman.

 

But back on topic - is this an attempt to shut us down through Health and Safety concerns, since they failed to do it with the VCR Bill?

:D hmmmmm, I thought that, but the previous posts from the OP don't make him look like a GCN plant :blink:

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