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Path: utzoo!linus!philabs!cmcl2!seismo!ut-sally!utastro!padraig
From: padraig@utastro.UUCP (Padraig Houlahan)
Newsgroups: net.aviation
Subject: contact lenses and flying
Message-ID: <59@utastro.UUCP>
Date: Wed, 24-Apr-85 14:53:01 EST
Article-I.D.: utastro.59
Posted: Wed Apr 24 14:53:01 1985
Date-Received: Fri, 26-Apr-85 23:32:59 EST
Distribution: net
Organization: U. Texas, Astronomy, Austin, TX
Lines: 25

I believe that one is allowed to fly if contact lenses are used. This
raises an interesting issue. My contacts are semi-hard gas permeable,
giving me excellent vision. They do have serious, and potentially fatal
drawbacks though, where flying would be concerned (I am not a pilot).

 The first concerns dust and grit getting into my eyes.
When this happens, and it has a few times while driving here in Texas,
I find the irritation incredibly distracting; my eyes blink like crazy,
 and tears appear very quickly in some instances. In other words my
eyes demand almost immediate attention, no matter what else I'm doing.
That this could happen to a pilot with similar contact lenses seems
very probable to me, placing him in a dangerous situation if he was just
about to land, or actually taking off. Has
anyone experienced/know of this problem?

The second problem concerns the small size of the hard contact lens.
During the day the pupil of the eye is small, and hence completely
covered by the lens. However, at night, with the pupil wide open
in the dark, the edges of the contact lens overlap the pupil
giving rise to fuzzy streaks about light sources. The cure
when driving at night is to simply look at the lights of an oncoming
car for a few seconds. What does the pilot with these lenses
do when making night-time approaches?

Padraig Houlahan.