FDA-Approved Contact Lenses Can Safely Change Eye Color for Halloween: Craig See, MD

Craig See, MD, a cornea specialist for the Cole Eye Institute at Cleveland Clinic, emphasized taking proper safety precautions before dressing up for Halloween, including making sure to change eye color by using contact lenses approved by an eye doctor and the FDA.

This transcript has been lightly edited for clarity; captions are auto-generated.

Transcript

What are the potential areas of concern in eye health when dressing up for Halloween?

The first thing is that there may be part of the costume, like a mask or a wig or feathers, that could get in your eyes, scratch your eye, and so that's something that could irritate the eye or lead to bigger problems down the road. There's also part of your costume might get in there, maybe if you have glitter or if you have makeup or something like that, that could potentially get in the eye and that could irritate the eye or cause a scratch or an infection. The third part of the costume I think could get you is, especially for kids’ costumes, if they’ve got things like wands or swords, they could swing those around and hit each other and hit themselves in the eye, or hit you in the eye, for that matter, and so that could poke somebody in the eye and potentially cause an injury.

Another one that we see quite a bit of is cosmetic contact lenses. All contact lenses can potentially cause eye infections. Most contact lenses that people wear have been fit by an optometrist—a doctor that learns how to fit contact lenses and does so safely—but if you order some online, especially ones that may not be FDA approved, that's a bigger risk for infection. Pretty much every year, we see people coming in with infections related to cosmetic contact lenses.

How should adults approach getting contacts to change their eye color for their costume?

I think the key there is, I would only put in a contact lens that's FDA approved. Most of the contact lenses you get online that are red or whiteout contact lenses or something like that, those are just imported, and they may not be FDA approved. Some of them may say that they're FDA approved, but most of them are not. The types of contacts that, if you're going to do that, I would try to go to an eye doctor and get a prescription pair of contact lenses. They may not have as wild of colors, but you can still get some different color contact lenses. They're not going to have the full whiteout or the full red vampire ones, but you could potentially change your eye color with a set of contact lenses like that. Anything you order online, just keep in mind that there's no quality checks. It's not like you're buying it from a big, reputable company in the United States. We've had issues in the past where people are ordering eye drops from overseas and getting infections from those, and so the quality control just may not be there when you're getting those off the internet.