Why is it necessary to rinse eyes for 15 minutes after getting a chemical in? Wouldn’t 1 minute be enough?
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I got my Ph. D. in chemistry and took lab safety classes during grad school and for work later. I remember this particular part of safety training.
Your eye is relatively spongy. When chemicals get into your eye, they can soak in quickly. Then when you’re rinsing your eyes, you’re fighting equilibrium of the chemical being in your eye tissue vs going into the water. The constant flushing pulls the chemical away dissolved in water, but it takes a long time for all the chemical to fully leech out of your eye into the water.
As others have said, some chemicals absorb more slowly into the eye and stay on the surface more, making it easier for the water to wash it away faster, so those chemicals could be washed away in much less time.
But which chemicals absorb less well like this? We don’t know. So it’s best to play it safe and assume 15 minutes is required. And some chemical manufacturers may have done some sort of testing that indicate that the 15 minutes really are necessary to fully remove the chemical from your eye.
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