Free tool · Scarlet Beast

When an eye is hurt

For anyone with a chemical, a speck, a blow or a cut to an eye, right now or earlier today, and for anyone seeing flashes or new floaters after an injury. What to rinse and what never to rinse. What not to pull out. When a black eye means the emergency room. A scratched eye, and contact lenses. The signs that show up afterwards. A child’s eye. Eye protection for sports, home and work. Where the sources differ. And the words to say when you call. No quiz and no score. One thing at a time.

This page and its wording were written with AI (Claude) for Scarlet Beast (our AI policy). The facts come from pages read on October 3, 2026: Prevent Blindness (First Aid for Eye Emergencies; Sports Eye Safety; Preventing Fireworks Eye Injuries); the American College of Emergency Physicians (Eye Emergencies, from its Know When to Go pages); Nemours KidsHealth (How to Handle an Eye Injury; Corneal Abrasions; Preventing Eye Injuries); the National Eye Institute (First Aid Tips, a page written for children; Retinal Detachment; Floaters; Finding an Eye Doctor; Get Free or Low-Cost Eye Care); MedlinePlus, from the U.S. National Library of Medicine (the summaries of Eye Injuries and of Retinal Detachment); Poison Control, from the National Capital Poison Center (its first aid page); the American Association for Pediatric Ophthalmology and Strabismus (Hyphema); the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (Eye Safety for Workers); the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (Eye and Face Protection); and the Consumer Product Safety Commission (Fireworks). Each is linked where it is used. One source we chose not to use: the American Academy of Ophthalmology, the eye doctors’ association, has pages on all of this, but its site says its content may not be put into an AI program without permission. We respected that: nothing here is taken from its pages, and we link to one so you can read it yourself. Some pages could not be read: the American Red Cross and Mayo Clinic sites refused our request in earlier work, the federal Poison Help site refused it today, and the addresses we tried at the American Academy of Pediatrics and for CDC’s older eye first aid pages were not found, so none of them is used. We did not read any first aid course material, or any page on a particular chemical, pepper spray or tear gas, superglue, laser pointers, eclipse viewing, eye drops sold without a prescription, or a broken bone around the eye; where the page touches one of these, it says so. We did not call any number. Where two sources say different things, the page reports each: whether to take out a contact lens before rinsing, how long to rinse, what to cover a cut eye with, and fireworks. The page has no questionnaire and gives no score, on purpose. It names no person, and it gives no figures for how many eyes are injured; the sources have them, with their context. The times on the page are the sources’ own. Lines marked “Ours” are our own suggestions. This page saves nothing: no account, no cookies, nothing you tick is stored or sent, and no analytics (privacy). Scarlet Beast is not a clinic or an emergency service, and takes no money from anyone named here. English only for now. Found a mistake? Email [email protected].