Got Perfume In Eyes? Here’s What You Should Do!

When you’re freshening up, you may raise the perfume bottle too high, which can cause some of the droplets to fall into your eye. This is followed by immediate itchiness and an urge to rub the eye. Please do not rub your eyes as this can worsen the situation. 

If you get perfume in your eyes, you should wash your hands, remove any contact lenses you may have, hold your eye open under a tap and let cold running water wash off any perfume residue. You’ll need to do this from 5 minutes to 20 minutes, depending on how much perfume got into your eye.

Once you’ve done this, you can return to this article and learn more about what getting perfume in your eye can mean for you and whether it will cause any complications. While you’re following the process above, remember the following precautions and best practices:

  • Close the other eye to avoid cross-contamination
  • Do not rub your eye as it distributes further the corrosive contents 
  • Wash your hands with soap before holding your eye open under a running tap
  • Make sure the tap water is cold or at least not hot

Can Perfume Damage Eyes?

So you’ve managed to wash away the perfume residue from your eye. Of course, this doesn’t take away the pain and even some of the symptoms of getting perfume on your cornea. Water itself stings the eye. All of this might have you wondering if perfume can damage your eyes.

Perfume can damage your eyes if directly sprayed onto your cornea. Perfume contains alcohol which can corrode the outermost layer of your eye, creating an abrasion that can turn into an ulcer and get infected. If your eye hurts 30 minutes after washing thoroughly, you should contact a medic.

However, most accidental eye exposure to perfumes doesn’t involve significant quantities, which means timely washing off what got into your eye is sufficient, and you only need to take care of your eye using the methods listed further below in this article.

But before we get to self-care for your eyes, we need to address the situations where you definitely should call a doctor.

Can Perfume in Your Eyes Cause Blindness?

While most accidental perfume-in-the-eye incidents are harmless in the grand scheme of things, there’s a very real possibility that serious exposure can have permanent consequences for your vision. 

Perfume in your eyes can cause blindness if you do not get medical help once your vision starts blurring. If you have directly sprayed perfume in your eye, you cannot treat the issue at home. But, if some fragrant mist has accidentally blown into your eye, it isn’t likely to cause blindness.

The difference of consequences is based entirely on two factors –

  • The amount of alcohol in the perfume
  • The concentration and quantity you got into your eye.

If you were spraying perfume in the air away from your eye, the droplets were already atomized and dispersed enough for only a harmless quantity to have fallen into your eye. Use the washing method covered above to fix this.

If you, however, got a concentrated dose in your eye (like right from a nozzle), you definitely need a doctor. With these covered, we can talk about self-care for the eye after such accidents.

Treatment for Perfume Sprayed in Eyes

While the emergency treatment (wash your eyes while avoiding cross-contamination) is already covered in this post, the proper A-to-Z home treatment is for those who would like to eliminate any possibility of future and are wondering “How to Get Rid of Perfume From Eyes”.

To get rid of perfume from the eyes and get proper treatment, you need to wash the scent away. If rinsing once isn’t working, use a showerhead from above while looking up while holding one eye open. Leave it on for 20 minutes just to be safe. Finally, you’ll need to lubricate your eye with drops.

Because eye drops look like medicine, some people go directly to this step. This only creates a well-lubed mixture of corrosive fragrance chemicals and the lubricating eye drops and distributes the perfume more evenly all over your eyeball. That’s why excessive washing is the first step.

man-dropping-eye-drop-medicine

On the other hand, people who wash their eyes and call it a day tend to overlook that water can, ironically, dry out your eye. That’s why eye drops are essential. Refresh Tears eye drops are great for lubricating your eyes after water exposure. 

While I recommend ordering these online for future use, if you are treating your eye as you read this, popping by your nearest chemist would be a better idea. It is also a good idea to bookmark this article in case there’s a similar accident in the future, or one of your friends needs the same advice.

The steps mentioned apply not just to perfumes but a wide variety of aerosols.

What if Deodorant Goes in Eyes? Is it Harmful?

As we just covered, the steps in this article help not just when you get perfume in your eyes but also when other aerosols end up in your eyes. The degree of harm depends entirely on the kind of substance, and the second-most standard product that ends up in the eye is a deodorant.

If deodorant goes into your eye, the most significant consequence is likely to be pain as it is irritating. Since deodorant containers are engineered to spread their contents much more broadly than the concentrated pumps of perfumes, you’re less likely to get permanent eye damage from such accidents.

That said, direct application to the eye is going to be harmful regardless of how delicate and non-corrosive a spray, perfume, or deodorant is. Therefore, your greatest concern should be when a child ends up with deodorant or perfume in their eye because you don’t know whether this was direct or by accident.

What to Do If Child Accidentally Sprays Perfume in Eyes?

It is one thing to get perfume in your own eye, but it is an entirely different situation when it comes to your child. The situation can become more stressful if they are unable to communicate the exact nature of the pain or the events of the incident.

If a child accidentally sprays perfume in eyes, assume they sprayed directly into their eye. Wash the affected eye out with cold water for 20 minutes, pour in eye drops, and call a doctor or a first-aid service immediately.

It is important to remain calm in such as situation. The doctor’s job is to confirm that what you have done is all that was required, and there wasn’t something that was missed.

Remember the following precautions

  • Make sure the kid’s other eye is covered
  • Remove any eyeliner or contacts
  • Do not panic, as perfume doesn’t immediately cause irreversible damage.

More Related Topics

  1. Should Perfume be Sprayed on Skin or Clothes? A Definitive Guide!
  2. 9 Best Perfumes for a Date! [For Him & Her]
  3. Deodorant vs Perfume: What’s the Difference? [Complete Guide!]
  4. Is Perfume a Good Gift? [With Options for Every Occasion!]
  5. Does Perfume Stain Your Clothes? [With Tips to Avoid the Stains!]
  6. 13 Reasons Why Your Perfume Fades So Quickly!

Credit to Jcomp (on Freepik) for the Featured Image of this Article

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