How to sanitise your glasses amid a pandemic
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How to sanitise your glasses amid a pandemic
How can you safely sanitise your glasses?
It turns out your new hand-washing habit also is a great start for how to sanitise your glasses and sunglasses amid the coronavirus pandemic.
We asked Dr. Anna Yeo, Essilor’s resident optician spokesperson, for the best way to sanitise one’s specs.
“Before cleaning the glasses, you should ensure that you have washed your hands with soap and water thoroughly for 20 seconds,” Yeo says. “Then wash your glasses with pH-neutral soap or washing liquid such as a detergent and tap water.”
Apply the soap to the glasses and gently use your fingers and thumbs to clean every corner of the eye glasses. Rinse under warm water and dry with a clean spectacle-cleaning cloth.
“The detergent in the soap is able to break down the virus capsules, thus removing them,” Yeo explains.
Those are the do’s. These are the don’ts:
Avoid washing your glasses with soaps that have abrasive beads in them, Yeo says. The abrasive beads can scratch your lenses and damage your lens coatings.
Don’t use disinfecting wipes — if or when you can find them again on store shelves — to clean your glasses. “They would damage the lenses or coatings,” Yeo says.
“There is no need to use disinfecting wipes, as cleaning the eyeglasses with soap and warm water as mentioned above is sufficient for normal use,” she says.
Bottom line: The best cleaning solution comes from your tap and is found near your kitchen sink.
How often should you clean and disinfect your glasses?
“We often wear our glasses full-day every day, so we can clean them once every day,” Yeo says. “To me, the best time to clean my glasses is after my shower, just before putting my glasses back onto my face!”
The biggest difference between hand-washing and glasses-cleaning? Hand-washing should be rigorous. You need to be more gentle with your eyeglasses.
With both hands and glasses, being diligent and thorough about your washing is the best way to fight the spread of coronavirus.
How can you keep your glasses clean through the day while you move about your home under lockdown? Keep a soft spectacle-cleaning cloth handy.
And wash your hands, wash your hands, wash your hands. Keeping your hands clean ensures your glasses are free of germs and viruses that can spread from your lenses or frames to your face or eyes.
The new normal has turned us all into stay-at-home mums, dads, teens and schoolchildren. Fears about the spread of coronavirus may also turn us all into clean freaks when it comes to washing our hands and sanitising our glasses and sunnies. That’s not a bad thing.