My understanding is that things like sand or sawdust wash out of the eye easily with water or eyewash but things like metal shavings especially steel shavings tend to stick to the eye and wont wash out. The only way to remove them is to have the hospital dig it out with a special tool. Why is this? Also what about tiny pieces of broken glass or glass “dust”, do they stick to the eye or wash out?
Metal is more likely to have very tiny ‘barbs’ which will embed in the cornea, while mineral and glass fragments tend to have cleaner fracture lines.
Still, I’ve seen glass slivers stuck in an eye, too.
But mostly when I have to dig something out of a cornea, it’s a metal fragment.
QtM, do you drill out the rust ring? We usually just remove the metal and refer to ophtho for further care.
I’ve a low threshold for sending out to our eye docs. But often it’s fresh and relatively easily liftable with a spud, with just a minimal bit of abrading. More complex/involved stuff like rust ring removal is outside of my comfort zone.
How you doin?
Can you just hold a magnet near the eye?
I work with metal a lot and have had a shard get stuck in my eye 3 times. More maybe but some worked itself out after a few hours. I’ve had to have metal shards removed 3 times by the doctor.
Like mentioned above, metal has little barbs and when it gets in your eye you start blinking and it makes it worse.
Two times I had it removed from my eye and I was on my way. The third time was with a different doctor. This doctor noticed a rust ring and went in with some suction tool and sucked the rust out.
The trouble is now that eye sees everything blurry. He said the blurriness might go away after awhile, but it’s been a year and while it has gotten better, it’s still blurry.
Hopefully it’ll never happen again, but if it does, I’ll just have the shard removed and leave the rust ring alone.
You can, but the metal still won’t come out and you’d look silly. 
Use a big enough magnet and they’ll come out, painfully. I had to get my eyes x-rayed before I had an MRI because I’d occasionally done some metal grinding.
Glass does stay in the eye if it wants to.
<signed, one-eyed bastard>
glass breaks with very flat smooth edges. small pieces would be light weight and any fluid would cause them to stick to that wet surface with strong adhesion.
I have a scar on my cornea that my optometrist spotted from a rusted on bit of metal. He said I was very lucky that it did not impact on my vision. He said to come straight to him and not go my gp next time. maybe you have scarring? Have you seen an eye doctor?
I have actually heard of iron workers using a magnet held right up to the eye to remove the metal, have you ever done this?
I think it’s true that small metal filings might be more inclined to get stuck on a cornea because they have tiny rough edges; as I think back over a career in the ED I guess that’s the commonest item folks come in for. Particles like organic material or smooth items tend to be soft enough to get washed around way under an eyelid or in the corner of an eye. As QtM says, almost any small particle can get embedded.
I suspect another reason metal is so commonly stuck is that metal particles commonly get flung like teeny bullets out of industrial machinery, grinders, hammers flicking off metal bits, and so on. They aren’t wafting around in a gentle breeze.
Once something small does get stuck, there’s a local tissue response with swelling so that the item in question is actually quite embedded. Even for ferromagnetic particles, I don’t think a magnet would work unless you used it right away, and in my opinion an amateur without a microscope would risk generating a corneal abrasion. Maybe I’m being too skeptical. A magnet might work better for metal on the lid or sclera, where the patient is not so sensitive.
I tend to use a #11 scalpel under the ophthalmic microscope; I’ve seen others use larger gauge hypodermic needle to gouge out the embedded particle. (The technique is to come in from the side so the sharp tip is not perpendicular to the cornea.) There is a small burr grinder that will take out any residual rust stain, but most of us leave that to the opthalmalogist. The cornea heals well, but you’d still rather not perforate it accidentally.
Unless the shaving is made of aluminum, copper, brass, or any other non-magnetic metal.
It would seem using a magnet would be less likely to cause a corneal abrasion than a needle or scalpel, unless I’m missing something. I knew a steel worker who said he did it himself 3 times, he used to keep a magnet in his bag at work. You hold open your lids with one hand and hold the magnet about half inch away from your eye with the other hand. I’m surprised more Emergency rooms don’t try this.
Maybe some do; you can go online and see references to this technique.
As I think back over the ones I’ve seen by the time the patient gets to the ED there is enough edema to embed it pretty tightly and lock it in. Under the microscope you can see whether a particle is deeply embedded or not, so if it’s not, it’s been my habit just to flick it off without bothering to see first if it was a ferrous metal or just any old particle…
Using a sharp point for removal of an embedded object does create a small crater in the cornea, which heals fairly rapidly. If the magnet never touched the cornea and drew off the metal, that would be less damage, for sure. However if the magnet were to contact the cornea (and patients tend to flinch and so on), that’s when I’d be concerned you’d get an abrasion.
Seems like it would be worth a try to use a magnet for a fresh ferrous bit, I agree, as long as you don’t touch the eye.
another thing I wondered is, do steel fillings tend to “stay put”. In other words if you get a peice of metal in your eye on Sunday night, is it safe to wait until monday to have a eye doctor remove it?