The pandemic has taught us many things: the importance of hygiene is one of them. Especially the repeated and thorough hand washing. But just as much care should be reserved for the cleaning of glasses, which numerous scientific researches have indicated as one of the surfaces with the highest contamination. “Those who have vision problems wear glasses all day and now with the arrival of summer even those who have no visual defects wear sunglasses. They are always with us, and even if we don’t notice them we touch them all the time ”, says Franco Spedale, Ophthalmology Specialist and Director of the Ophthalmology Department at Chiari Hospital, Brescia. “So everything that is on the hands passes over the glasses: bacteria and viruses, environmental pollution and even the droplets of saliva of the speaker, the famous dropplets. We have to worry about the cleanliness of the glasses as we care about personal hygiene. ”Resistance to dirt and ease of cleaning are characteristics that not all lenses have. If in fact most of the anti-reflective treatments use hydrophobic and oleophobic layers to give the lenses the ability to repel water and oily substances, often this protection does not last long. The lenses designed to maintain these characteristics for a long time undergo super-hydrophobic treatments that guarantee extreme ease of cleaning and have an antistatic layer that keeps the lens clean for longer.
But even with the most sophisticated lenses, the need for cleaning remains high. So how do you make sure your glasses are clean? Here are five practical tips
1. Wash your glasses frequently and in all their parts. You don’t need to do it as much as with your hands, but once a day it is certainly essential. Before washing your glasses, make sure your hands are clean.
2. Use soap and water, as for your hands. Or wipes specially formulated for cleaning lenses that are both detergents and sanitizers.
3. Do not clean the glasses using handkerchiefs, T-shirts, tea towels, tablecloths. Using the first available piece of cloth risks scratching the lenses and transferring dirt from one side to the other.
4. To clean and dry use soft cloths. The ones supplied when you buy glasses are fine but remember to wash them frequently. Otherwise they themselves become receptacles for microbes.
5. Prefer antimicrobial and antiviral coated lenses such as Zeiss lenses. Thanks to technological innovation, it is now possible to deposit silver nanoparticles in the matrix of the lenses and thus make them capable of eliminating bacteria and viruses that deposit on the surface.