About Those Prescription Eyeglasses

2011 01 14
V ero Beach  FL

On the overnight run down Long Island Sound I managed to ruin two pairs of prescription eyeglasses.  The destruction took less than 2 hours total.  Neither pair left my face except to be cleaned by a clean soft dry cotton cloth that I always use for that purpose alone.

On both pair of eyeware the lens became cloudy with bizarre scratch lines.  Although microscopic there were so many lines that the result was a cloud on the lens.

Two pair in two hours. 

Only six months earlier I had had one pair of lens replaced by the optician who dispensed them because the coatings on the lens were detaching in patches.  The result was the same opacity in the lens.

The Budget Committee is now losing the coating on her eyeware: it is peeling off in tiny sheets.

In December my optician at Lens Crafters informed me that the cause was the ANTI GLARE COATING applied to the lens.  She was adamant that salt water would eat away the anti glare coating on most eyeware in very short order.  I would have been more assured had this not been the same store that sold me the glasses that were destroyed.  At the time of purchase I was very specific about the intended use to be made and the environment in which the lens would find themselves.  I have new replacement lens without the anti glare coating.  We will see.

Before you set off for the salt talk to your optician, or better yet an optometrist or even better by far your opthalmologist, and find out what effect salt water is going to have on the coatings on your lens.

Our son in law, Nick, who took a full year of opticianry before he erupted in unbearable frustration with the quality of training at the overbearingly bureaucratic and hysterically feminist opticianry program at Georgian College in Barrie Ontario suggested we try having lens made from a Nikon product called Nikon Eyes.  Nikon lens incorporate the various lens effects in the lens material itself rather than leaving the auto darkening, anti glare, anti UV effects to be achieved by coatings added after the lens are manufactured.


Unfortunately that particular product is limited to use in progressive lens which I do not use. 


If anyone has experience in this let me know and I will pass it on.  Right now your eyeware is at risk if you go to sea.  Take two or more pair and keep the sea off of them to the extent possible.