Oakley Flak Jacket XLJ Sunglasses

Reduce Eye Fatigue – Squinting into the sun can easily cause your eyes to dry and feel tired, and you’re certainly not at your best when suffering from eye fatigue. Instead, give your eyes some relief by wearing polarized golf sunglasses. They block out those bright UV rays that threaten a squint-free view of the tee, and help you keep your focus on the fairway, rather than that dreadful ruff.

Light Optimized Lenses – The light is very different when you’re swinging that club at 7am or later on in the afternoon at 3pm. Fortunately, golf sunglasses come in a variety of different lens colors that can help optimize your vision during those different tee times. For early morning games, wear a pair of our Yellow Lens Edge Kazbek Golf Sunglasses to brighten your frame of vision. For afternoon tee times, wear our Fire Iridium Oakley Half Jacket Golf Sunglasses that perform best in medium to bright light.

Impact Resistant – Golf may not be a contact sport, but if you’ve ever come in contact with an errant golf ball, it certainly feels like it is! Several models of our golf sunglasses do indeed meet U.S. Military eyewear ballistic impact resistance requirements, helping you stay safer on the course. Check out our Edge Baretti Golf Sunglasses line to attain this recommended level of protection.

Comfortable and Lightweight – After wearing sunglasses for a few hours, do you ever notice the top of your nose or side of your ears hurting? If you have, you shouldn’t! Real golf sunglasses, like our Oakley Flak Jacket Sunglasses, feature comfortable and lightweight materials that also place an emphasis on not sliding from your face as you concentrate on your swing.

Wearing the right pair of Golf Sunglasses is just one of the many tried and true tips to improve your game, and we’ve heard from golfers on what a difference wearing golf sunglasses and not wearing golf sunglasses can make. Have golf sunglasses improved your game? Leave us a comment to tell us how!

So why not during severe weather events then — like tornado and hurricane warnings — when there’s a high likelihood that heavy projectiles could come flying straight at your kids’ heads?? The answer seems almost universal: “I don’t know. I never even thought about it before. But it sure makes a lot of sense!”

This is a timely topic, because perhaps you heard the news story about the Stewart Family’s tornado ordeal about two weeks ago, April 27. A series of devastating tornadoes killed more than 300 people across the Southeast that day, and Jonathan Stewart was just one of many people who raced the storm to get home to his family. He found his wife, adult daughter, and 8-year-old son taking shelter in their small shower stall just minutes before they felt the house become weightless and heard a gigantic explosion.

AP Photo Caption: Noah Stewart shelters in the closet just 15 minutes before an April 2012 tornado demolished his house. Wearing the helmet may have saved his life, one doctor says.

“I remember being sucked out of the house,” Jonathan said. “It was not like being blown about. It was not walls blowing around. It was like a vacuum, and it sucked us out.” His wife, Lisa, recalls the terrifying sight of her 8-year-old, Noah, “… up in the air. I actually saw him stuck up inside it [inside the tornado] … being tossed around as high as the power lines.” Twisting, flying, held up by the force of the tornado’s tremendous energy, Noah remembers, “… and then the wind just immediately stopped, and I was going down headfirst, and then I think my helmet just cracked.”

That’s right. His helmet. Noah had put on his Little League baseball helmet with the strap and face guard — and it may have just saved his life, according to his emergency room doctor. Because Noah was the only family member wearing protective headgear that night, in pictures later, Noah’s face appears fine, while his parents look like they went 5 rounds with a professional cage fighter.

In fact, most of the 60 children ER Dr. Mark Baker treated for storm-related injuries that night suffered some form of head trauma. “Children’s heads are relatively large compared to the rest of their body. So during a tornado, where they’re thrown by the wind, or an object is thrown into them, or a building collapses, it is most frequently the head that is injured,” he says.

The doctors at Children’s Hospital decided the time was overdue for getting this news out. Working with a local television meteorologist, they produced a PSA to spread the word that helmets help save lives during weather emergencies. Others stepped forward to help raise awareness too. At a recent Birmingham Barons baseball game in Alabama, 125 bicycle helmets were given away as part of this new emergency preparedness campaign.

While standing in line with their three kids for free helmets, one Trussville, Alabama family summed it up for most of us: “We didn’t even think about it … and then we started hearing how much safer it was … that you should wear them, and so we were like … ‘Why didn’t we do this before?’ I don’t know why. It’s such a great idea! It just never occurred to us.”

Even the CDC has taken up the cry, as this Friday, May 4 headline states: CDC Urges Helmet use in Severe Weather: “Families should consider adding helmets to their storm survival kits, federal officials said Thursday. While getting to shelter quickly is most important when a tornado is on the way, a readily available helmet might also be helpful. The CDC issued its statement in response to reported incidents of children surviving tornadoes while wearing bicycle, football, or baseball helmets.”

Besides Helmets, What Else Should Be in Your Family’s Emergency Survival Kit?

Safety Glasses USA has written excellent articles on emergency preparedness. “Are You Prepared For An Emergency? 5 Steps To Be Sure” and “Pencil in Safety Glasses on Your Emergency Kit Checklist” are two great ones.

Besides some sort of helmet for each family member then, a pair of safety goggles for each person is also vitally important. Adult-sized goggles are critical to parents’ ability to keep the rest of the family safe by ensuring that debris blown into their eyes by high winds won’t impede their ability to take action and make potentially life-saving decisions.

Small safety goggles for children and adults with smaller faces are also available and have straps that tighten around small heads. Additionally, these have anti-fog lenses and meet ANSI Z87.1-2010 standards as well.

Other necessities include:

• Three gallons of water for each person
• At least a three day supply of non-perishable food
• Battery powered or hand crank radio
• Flashlight and extra batteries
• First aid kit
• Emergency cell phone, charged
• Extra doses of your prescription medication
• Warm blankets

Follow this advice, and your family will be as safe as possible during severe weather. And thank you Noah Stewart, for teaching all of us such an incredibly simple, incredibly important, life-saving lesson.

Wiley X Safety Sunglasses

The article UV Protection – Eliminating Excuses, presented 5 facts to help motivate readers to protect their eyes in the best ways possible. In this article, the number one reason for not protecting eyes by wearing sunglasses is addressed.

In a recent survey, most individuals indicated they felt protecting eyes against UV rays was important, and many followed through on that belief by purchasing quality sunglasses. When asked why they failed to wear those sunglasses regularly, many confessed that the main reason they did not wear their sunglasses was, simply, that they forgot.

Since so many people readily admit that forgetting to bring or wear their sunglasses is a problem, the following 5 tips are offered to help build the habit and stimulate the memory for wearing sunglasses.

1. Have a place for them. Just like with your car keys, sunglasses will likely get lost if they don’t have a home. Many vehicles have a bin for storing sunglasses, and there are a variety of cases available for storing sunglasses that can be put in a bag or even hung on a hook next to your keys. Find a place to always put your sunglasses.
2. Be consistent. Once you have a place for your sunglasses, be systematic in putting them there. Having a place does absolutely no good if you don’t use it consistently. When going in and out of buildings, such as when shopping at an outlet mall for example, consider a neck strap for your sunglasses to make taking them on and off without losing them of having to put them somewhere easier.
3. Tell your kids. While forgetfulness seems to be a natural ability of many children, most children also enjoy helping their parents remember what’s important to them. Tell your kids to remind you to wear your sunglasses, and even explain why doing so is important. You might be surprised to find that they can actually be good at reminding you. They feel important, and your eyes get protected.
4. Buy an extra pair. With sunglasses available in a wide price range, having an extra pair is not a problem. Keep the extra pair in your car or carryall bag, so they are most likely with you at all times. There are a variety of hard cases and pouches available to protect your sunglasses (and many have cleaning cloths in them too), so your sunglasses are in perfect shape when you need them.
5. Create a mental checklist. Avoid making too long of a list, but create one that includes all of the items you never want to leave home without. A sample list might be: Sunglasses, water bottle and snack. After you have your list, get into the habit of saying it every time you walk out the door. Eventually, remembering those items will be automatic, and you can move on to a new list.

The bottom line is to find a method that works for you. Build positive habits to help you remember your sunglasses simply because doing so can impact your eye health in significant ways.

Tip #1: Have a boating license? A boating license is more than a sheet of paper – it’s acknowledgement that you are responsible enough to drive a boat, and that you know the boating safety must-haves. If you’re not driving the boat, make sure the driver does indeed have a license.

Tip #2: Check the fuel. Ever hop in your car without checking how much gas you have left? You’re excited to head out into the water, and after getting everyone onboard, it’s so easy to forget to check that you have enough fuel! Some boaters keep a checklist in their dock to ensure they don’t forget to check this very essential boating safety tip.

Tip #3: Consult the weather report. Ah, calm waters and not a cloud in the sky. Then twenty-minutes out, the raindrops start to fall and the thunder clouds roll in. The weather can be very mercurial, so take care to check the weather report before you head out. Smartphone apps make it even easier to do so these days.

Tip #4: Wear safety glasses. We’ve said again and again how important – yet easy to overlook – safety glasses are. It’s no different when out in the water. You’re boating at a nice speed, and although the wind rushing at you is a great feeling, it can always cause your eyes to dry or bugs, dirt, and water to fly up in your eyes, distracting you from driving the boat. Polarized safety glasses, like our Edge Dakura Polarized Safety Glasses, help you see more detail as you cruise along the water, without fear of bugs or water spraying up at you.

Tip #5: Take care with alcohol. Boating is great fun, isn’t it? It’s tempting to mix boating with alcohol, especially on innocent-looking lakes in the summertime. Yet, boating accidents dramatically increase when alcohol is involved. The smallest error in judgment can cause harm to you, your guests, and your boat. Save the alcohol for the dock!

The type of watercraft is no matter – simply being out in the water and safely enjoying the rush of the wind against your cheeks is one of our favorite parts of the summertime. As long as you are following boating safety tips, you can have an enjoyable boating experience. Know a boater in your life? Keep him or her safe by gifting polarized safety glasses, in exchange for a ride on the boat, of course!

On the other hand, avid climbers will tell you there’s nothing else in the world like learning to trust your body enough to reposition correctly while virtually hanging in thin air; practicing creativity and concentration; overcoming your fear of the void; learning to adapt to what mother nature offers; not to mention, the many benefits of this intense whole-body workout.

Plus, because climbing is both an individual sport and a social one, you learn plenty about yourself, as well as the people you climb with. When you’re on the rock, you rely on your own skills to get to the top; but if you should happen to fall, you’re trusting your climbing partner with your life. This creates very strong bonds — different than any other kind that exist in your life.

But it’s also about discovering the natural world. Climbing takes you to some of the most beautiful places on the planet and never fails to offer a unique perspective on the world below — and the world within. As you can see, rock climbing is something very, very special for those who are inspired to take it up as a hobby — often quickly turning into their life passion.

Your Passion Deserves Eye Protection

It doesn’t take much imagination to understand that rock climbing requires some pretty fierce eye protection. Climbers contend with the glare of the blazing sun reflecting off the shear rock face, they have tiny (and not so tiny) particles of debris continually falling into their upturned faces, and they’re often drilling holes and chiseling rock to anchor new bolts — or digging out old, unsafe ones — all while blowing away rock dust while they work. So do you think — just perhaps — that a pretty great pair of protective, polarized, 100% UVA/B/C sunglasses might in order?

Top Five Rock Climbing Eyewear Recommendations:

• Oakley Fives Squared Sunglasses – “If ordinary sunglasses just don’t fit, Fives Squared is the answer. Unlike conventional sunglasses that stick out at the sides, this frame uses Condensed Cranial Geometry for a tapered architecture that feels as good as it looks, and it’s a look that soaks sophistication in adrenalin.”
• Oakley Half Jackets Sunglasses – “Performance, protection and comfort are sculpted into a new dimension of style with an interchangeable lens design that keeps you a step ahead of changing light conditions. The latest evolution wraps your vision in the razor-sharp clarity of High Definition Optics® (HDO®). Wherever your sport takes you, you’ll have the all-day comfort of a lightweight design that can take punishing abuse while serving up premium optical technology.”
• Oakley M Frames – “Maintain optical clarity with lens contours that enhance side protection from sun, wind, and impact. Stress-resistant O MATTER frames are engineered with a critical degree of flexibility to absorb impact. PLUTONITE lenses are impact resistant and offer added protection by filtering out 100% of UVA/B/C and harmful blue light.”
• Oakley Wires – “Stems with UNOBTAINIUM® increase grip with sweat, and are crafted with smooth contours and titanium MONO SHOCK™ hinges that allow for hyper-flex when the world comes at you head-on and dares to make contact. A lightweight blend of five metal compounds offer durability that keeps comfort at the top of the list. The Three-Point Fit eliminates pressure points, because life has enough of those already.”
• Oakley Racing Jacket Sunglasses – “Adapt and conquer with Oakley Switchlock™ Technology for fast and easy lens changing to optimize your vision for your environment. And when G-forces strike you, the retaining strap makes sure the frame stays put. Two sets of lenses are included (one for bright light and one for low light), and you’ll have High Definition Optics® (HDO®) to go along with the performance, comfort, and protection of ultra-premium sport eyewear.”

It’s important to remember that while hanging off the edge of a rock by your fingertips and toes, it may be more difficult to quickly and safely move away from the trajectory of a falling projectile. Moreover, the risk of eye injury increases when practicing any high risk sport.

The most frequent eye injuries suffered by rock climbers include:

• Corneal abrasions – scratches and cuts
• Wounds caused by a blunt falling object – such as the impact from a rock or a fumbled piece of equipment being held overhead
• Wounds caused by a penetrating object – such as a sharp tool or bolt.

The right climbing glasses protect you from UV rays and glare, falling debris, wind, and impact. However, to prevent injuries, always ensure a correct safe fit. Climbers should try on their glasses with their helmet to be certain they fit firmly without pressing too hard. If your glasses move or slide on your face while climbing, you increase your risk of injury due to the distraction of unstable glasses instead of concentrating on your climb. You can be guaranteed Safety Glasses USA will work with you to find the perfect-fitting pair of super-stylish, safe and protective climbing glasses to enhance your love of your favorite sport.

Smith & Wesson Mini-Magnum with Gold Metallic Mirror Lens

Most people agree that sunglasses can protect eyes from harmful UV rays. Most people also believe that eye protection benefits overall health. And the majority of individuals usually wears sunglasses during outdoor activities and while driving. Yet, not even half of individuals surveyed actually wear sunglasses that truly protect their eyes. In addition, the majority of people also feel that children should wear sunglasses too, but one glance at a park or ball field on sunny day and the lack of follow through in this area is obvious.

So why the disparity? Many individuals focus only on fashion when choosing sunglasses, or they don’t feel that UV protection is an absolute necessity. The following 5 facts provide the necessary information to help eliminate excuses for not protecting eyes against harmful UV rays.

1. Experts stress the importance of UV protection for eyes. In “How the Sun Affects Our Eyes: An Interview with an Optometrist,” author Denise Cripps details that not only is the accumulated affect of UV rays on the eyes significant, but it is especially so for those under 18. Because protecting eyes is so crucial, eliminating excuses for not protecting them is a worthwhile pursuit.
2. You can have BOTH fashion and UV protection. Many individuals choose sunglasses based on fashion. Unfortunately, fashion sunglasses often fail to protect eyes against harmful UV rays. Yet fortunately, a large variety of sunglasses DO PROTECT the eyes and also LOOK GREAT on the wearer. Check out these options, and you’ll quickly become a believer.
3. Affordability is no longer an issue. While many sunglasses with UV protection can get pricey, there are just as many that are quite affordable. Makers like Tapout provide a variety of fashionable and affordable options with several items pricing out below $20.
4. The options available eliminate excuses. Individuals who wear prescription glasses as well as those needing an additional level of safety because of their job no longer have to compromise either. There are a variety of over-prescription eyewear, prescription-ready sunglasses, and safety sunglasses with UV protection to fit anyone’s unique situation. Even those wearing bifocals have some terrific options for sunglasses.
5. Protecting your child’s eyes doesn’t have to be expensive. Many people are hesitant to spend a lot on sunglasses for children because in general children tend to either be rough or forgetful and often both. Fortunately, many inexpensive options such as the Smith & Wesson Mini-Magnum Safety Glasses with Gold Metallic Mirror and the Dewalt Renovator Small Safety Glasses with Indoor-Outdoor Lens exist to protect young eyes against UV rays as well as against impact hazards such as those that come with sports. Options are so affordable, that purchasing a back-up pair is not out of the question.

Changing habits can be a struggle for many people, and education can be a key component to eliminate excuses that stand in the way. This fact certainly holds true for protecting eyes against harmful rays from the sun. With the elimination of the excuses addressed in the above 5 facts, hopefully the disparity between belief and action can be reduced.

Stay tuned for next week’s article that will identify and address one of the biggest reasons many individuals do not wear sunglasses.