Walking Carefully With Masks, Avoiding Projectiles Are Key in Protecting Eyes on Halloween: Douglas Lazzaro, MD

Both children and adults can injure their eyes through a bad fall or getting hit in the eye, making awareness of surroundings vital to eye health as Halloween approaches, says Douglas Lazzaro, MD, professor of ophthalmology and vice chair of operations at NYU Langone Health.

This transcript has been lightly edited for clarity; captions are auto-generated.

Transcript

How can people protect their eyes when dressing up on Halloween?

How do you protect the eyes? You've got to be careful with masks, and you've got to tell your child, if it's a child, to be very careful while they're walking. I would be super careful not to get any makeup that is used, these dyes that are used, or glitter into the eye, and colored contact lenses should be discouraged. If you really want to use them, I would seek out a professional optometrist or ophthalmologist who is licensed to do this. They can get you something that fits properly, and you'll get something that's gone through the FDA approval process. Those are the main things with Halloween that we worry about.

Now, there are other times people are throwing things during Halloween, and they're shooting things, foam stuff. Those things also can cause irritation to the ocular surface. Any projectile, even if it's a foam thing, that's shot during Halloween—you've got to be careful. They can cause inflammation of the eye, something called traumatic uveitis. We can get bad inflammation of the eye. That's also something that can lead to some serious problems. You want to try to avoid shooting any projectile things, even if they're toy guns that shoot things, Nerf things, or things like that. If they hit the eye hard enough, they can cause some inflammation of the eye.

I would say, just be careful with walking in the streets. Be careful; if you do have a mask on, make sure you're looking very closely; you can turn your head. Rather than just looking to the left [and] right, turn your whole head so you make sure you see where you're going. Make sure that you're really careful and not tripping on the gowns. A lot of people have gowns. Sometimes they trip on the gowns, especially when it's dark out and you're going up staircases. Tell them to walk carefully, particularly to be careful with steps, because we see injuries where people trip on steps and they hit their eye, and you can cause significant damage if you hit your eye hard enough falling into something. The houses are not necessarily made ready for trick-or-treaters, and these little folks may not be as careful as we want them to be as they're going up. They can trip on outfits. They can trip on someone that's in front of them [and] step on an outfit. Be careful when you're walking. Be careful when you're going up steps. Look around when you're going back and forth from house to house; when you're crossing the street, be extra cautious.