eli5 basically the title: How does my contact lens fluid disinfect my lens without disinfecting or burning my eyes. When I put the lens‘ in there’s quite a bit of fluid still on them. The fluid I use is extremely comfortable and I really can’t understand how it cleans, disinfects and lubricates my lens.
In: Chemistry
Bacteria are bad because they multiply really quickly and use up a lot of local ressources to do so.
But that is also their weakness. If they float in something that they can use to build new bacteria, but something that in turn makes those new bacteria unviable to survive, they’ll start using it and you’ll quickly kill off entire colonies.
Your lens solution contains stuff that bacteria and fungi incorporate into themselves but that is really really bad for them. At the same time your body cells are not interested in that stuff at all.
Disinfectants that use alcohol and other destructive substances work by tearing apart microorganisms, but disrupting their replication or repair functions also works just fine, and there’s lots of disinfectants that work this way.
(In fact, the ‘burning’ sensation of some disinfectants really has nothing to do with their disinfecting properties, and is an entirely seperate process for mostly unrelated reasons)
Do you use clean care like I do?
The storage solution is a dilute solution of hydrogen peroxide along with salt and other additives. Hydrogen peroxide is a good disinfectant. If you put it directly in your eyes, it will burn them.
The little storage vials have a bottom section that is coated with a thin layer of a metallic catalyst. That catalyst speeds up the conversion of the hydrogen peroxide to plain water and the bubble that come off are the extra oxygen from the hydrogen peroxide. Overnight, all the hydrogen peroxide is converted to water, so it goes from disinfecting solution to plain saline solution.
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