Eyewash stations are a staple in facilities that use materials that can cause eye injury or eye infection, providing reprieve after accidental exposure.
But simply having an eyewash station in your workplace isn’t enough. Not properly maintaining a station potentially can cause more harm than good and even create its own emergency situation.
Improperly maintained eyewash stations can become a breeding ground for organisms that exist in stagnant and untreated water. Think Legionella, Pseudomonas, Acanthamoeba. And those organisms can infect the worker not only through the water, but also through the skin or through inhalation.