I mostly store my lenses in water, and after a while there’s a pink tinge to it and I give it a more thorough cleaning. Especially on the outside of the case. Question is what that stuff is and whether it’s some sort of live thing (fungus or bacteria or whatever) or mineral deposits. I assume (or at least hope) the latter.
Well, ahem. It may be a bit personal.
Do you use a lot of laxatives?
I see similar stuff on my CPAP machine’s water reservoir if it’s not completely dried each day. It was much worse when I ran out of distilled water during lockdowns and resorted to tap. I can’t give advice on contacts and associated equipment, but I put the affected parts in our dishwasher and it cleaned right up. I also resumed using distilled water as soon as I could and the problem hasn’t resurfaced.
Yes, I had the same thing in my water pik thingy after not drying it out for a while. It’s not specific to lens cases. Hence the “and the like”. It’s most concerning when it’s on a contact lens case, which is why that attracted more of my attention.
You mean just tap or drinking water? Is this normal? I was at the eye doctor a few weeks ago and noticed a poster for new contact lens wearers. It said to never store lenses in water and went so far as to say you shouldn’t even rinse the case with water (though I do rinse anyway).
I’ve read that water treatment doesn’t kill amoeboflagellate excavate (brain-eating amebas) so you don’t want to get water in your eyes.
I wear contact lenses and store them in either saline (Biotrue) or hydrogen peroxide (with a catalyst, so it eventually becomes pure water, however this isn’t tapwater and presumably doesn’t have any brain-eating amebas in it or if there were any they were killed by the peroxide).
Regular tap water. I happened to mention this at my last visit to the optometrist and he expressed some mild disapproval. But I’ve been doing this for decades.
I wear hard/gas permeable lenses and not soft lenses, and the liquid is serving a bit of a different purpose. But I imagine it’s not recommended anyway.
That would seem to preclude taking showers or swimming. Fortunately amoeba flagellate excavate is apparently very rare. In any event, I do rub the lenses in this wetting/soaking solution before inserting them - the water is for storing overnight. (Every couple of months I also run them in some sort of cleaner.)
This is what I first thought of. We find it growing in our dish drain (which is why I always make sure all the water is drained from there, and is the reason I spread the dish washcloth out to dry. The idea of using a sponge, which can’t dry out so completely, squicks me out) If I find the mold growing in the drain, I wipe it dry with a paper towel and clean with disinfectant.
The stuff is ubiquitous. Last week I found it growing in our autoclave, which hadn’t been completely drained and was allowed to sit around for weeks.