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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It’s more of dilution in case you didn’t get it all since there are a lot of areas not reachable
You wanna make sure you dilute it as much as possible. Depending on the chemical it will just sit there and break down the eye, so diluting it more is better.
This is possibly tangential, but as somebody that has been OC sprayed (military grade pepper spray), sometimes 15 minutes isn’t enough. Your eyes are sensitive and delicate. If something is dangerously irritating them, washing them as thoroughly as you possibly can is the best course of action. Even if the chemical irritant has been diluted/ washed away to a no longer dangerous concentration, there’s a good chance your eyes still hurt. More water’s probably the only thing you can do about that.
Maybe? Better safe than sorry, though. You can never be *too* careful for things like that.
Depends on the chemical… Making totally made up numbers 1 min might get 99% out of your eye, 2 min might get 99.5% out of your eye, 5 min 99.8%, and so on approaching 100%
Plus there’s saftey factor in there, and some people are bad at washing there eyes and therefore need longer
Literally 4 hours ago I got acetone in my eyeball. Praying that it’ll be fine after all the flushing 🤞🏾🤞🏾
I worked in a laboratory and by accident got sprayed right in the eyes with a jet of ethanol and the procedure was to rinse at the eyewash station for 15 minutes with saline solution.
I can tell you from experience that it burns and stings for way longer than a minute, the cooling flush of fresh non irritating liquid provides an insane amount of relief.
Even if 1 minute was enough to get it all out its like spicy food, it just lingers and you’ll be happy for the relief the time and liquid bring
Something probably related to that phrase ‘the solution to pollution is dilution’ even if you hadn’t get absolutely everything out you can further dilute what is there..
The 1st minute would remove the bulk of the chemical but the remaining 14 minutes plus is to try and flush that portion that your cornea and sclera and other soft tissues have absorbed like a.sponge.
Optometrist here… you technically have to rinse until the pH is back to neutral. You keep going until it reaches close to 7. 15min is just a good starting point. Bases/acids penetrate the cornea so why stop every minute to check? Better to just keep on rinsing.
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