The American National Standards Institute (ANSI) is a non-for-profit institute providing the nation with voluntary standards
. Having a voluntary standards means that the use of any standard is completely optional. The ANSI purpose is to avoid hazards. After testing for imperfections, the product is assigned a label.
The ANSI has over 10,000 standards. With only 90+ workers in Washington D.C. and New York City, the ANSI cannot reach the 3.5 million professionals or the 125,000 companies who need their standards. They handle this by hiring Standard Developing Organization (SDO's). The SDO's work together in teams to communicate and create the national standards. The top twenty producing SDO's account for 90% of the data collected for the ANSI.
The ANSI has a standard for testing lenses. The lenses are tested on two levels: basic impact and high impact. The basic impact requires that a 1" steal ball be released at 50" above the lens. With high impact tests, the use of ballistic cannon is common. A 14" steal ball is shot at the lens with a speed of 150 feet per second. These tests make up the standard label for safety glasses: Z87.1.
People who wear spectacles should be interested in prescription safety eye glasses. The prescription safety eye glasses need to have a prescription with the pupil distance marked. The pupil distance is the space from one eye to the other. Any optician can measure the pupil distance, but without the pupil distance the manufacturer will set the distance for men at 65mm and for women at 63mm.
Within certain hobbies the needs to see and be safe are an intricate part of participation. Swimming goggles, motor bike goggles and goggles for skiing are all excellent choices for prescription protective eyewear.