Why Wear Prescription Sports Goggles or Protective Sports Eyewear?

Want to protect your eyes during your favorite sports and outdoor activities? If you or your kids participate in local sports teams, leagues, or other activities, prescription sports goggles provide secure, protective eyewear to help you see better and be better protected.

Why is it Important to Wear Protective Sports Eyewear?

Eye injury is a reality in the world of sports. As you can see with the list of sports eye injury statistics below, protective sports eyewear really is important for improved safety.

  • More than 600,000 eye injuries are related to sports and recreation occur each year.
  • Every 13 minutes a person with a sports related eye injury visits an emergency room.
  • More than 90% of all eye injuries can be prevented with the use of appropriate protective eyewear.

What is Protective Sports Eyewear?

Protective sports eyewear is either eyeglass frames or goggles that are specifically designed and manufactured to meet or exceed the appropriate U.S. Impact Protection Standards. All protective sports eyewear must have protective lenses designed to withstand impact. Most sports goggles also have sports bands to help secure the goggles to your face during high-impact activities.

What are the U.S. Impact Protection Standards?

There are two important U.S. standards for protective eyewear:

  • ASTM F803: The American Society for Testing and Materials publishes protective eyewear standards for various sports. F803 is the strictest standard for protective eyewear.
  • ANSI Z87.1: The American National Standards Institute publishes standards for protective eyewear designed for occupational safety.

Prescriptions in the Goggles

With prescription sports goggles, your individual prescription will be ground into the polycarbonate lenses and inserted into the sports goggles. Therefore, each pair of prescription sports goggles are unique and cannot be worn by other users.

What Brands do we Recommend?

Among the numerous quality suppliers that we use at Hi-Tech Optical Inc., the two biggest suppliers for prescription sports goggles are Liberty Sport and Wiley X. Two great options from Liberty Sport that we recommend are the F8 and Rec Specs. Both of these frames are tested to withstand the ASTM F803 impact resistant standards for baseball, basketball, handball, paddleball, racquetball, squash, and tennis.

  • F8: This is a new premium protective sports eyewear brand with 8 models that all incorporate the most advanced eye rim, frame, and fit technologies.
  • Rec Specs: Rec Specs is the world leading brand of high-quality protective eyewear designed specifically for sporting applications.