Masks, Special Makeup Could Pose Issues for Eye Health Near Halloween: Douglas Lazzaro, MD

Douglas Lazzaro, MD, professor of ophthalmology and vice chair of operations at NYU Langone Health, discussed the use of masks, special makeup, and colored contact lenses during Halloween season, including their potential risks when going trick-or-treating or attending holiday parties. Getting parts of the costume into the eye could lead to permanent damage to the eye if costumers are not careful, he said.

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

Transcript

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

One of the things that people do when they get ready for Halloween is they put costumes on; they usually put masks on. And masks have some issues related to them. One is, just like during the beginnings of the COVID epidemic, people sometimes put masks on that have elastic bands. The masks can sometimes, just when you're putting them on, snap and actually hit the eye—and not around the eye, but the eye itself—and can cause abrasions or scratches of the cornea. So, masks: One problem is they can cause scratched corneas from the elasticity if they snap and hit the eye.

Secondly, when a mask is on, there is a possibility they can restrict the field of vision. That makes it difficult when you're walking, going down steps, so kids, they have a mask on, they may not have perfect binocularity or depth perception if they're covering part of one of the eyes, and that can lead to, actually, falls. You can have falls with it. It can also impair your peripheral vision, so if you walk into the street and you're partially masking your vision on one side, you might not see an oncoming car. So you've got to be careful with masks. They can impair your vision with your visual field, they can impair your depth of vision, and cause corneal abrasions.

The second thing with Halloween is people will put all sorts of special makeups on, and they'll do something sometimes to the eyelashes. I had a patient in my office yesterday that got glue from the extended eyelashes that were put onto the eye. And that's not uncommon to see. These glues can have toxicity to the cornea, the front of the eye. That you can see at various times of the year when people get these extenders, glue can get in the eye. Other types of makeup that people put on during Halloween can be glitter, and the glitter is best when it's not in the eye. If it gets in the ocular surface, it can be toxic to the ocular surface. It can cause ocular irritation, redness, and inflammation of the eye. We don't want eye makeups to get in the eye that may be toxic and cause irritation to the eye.

Now, one of the things that could be more serious is colored contact lenses. Colored contact lenses, if they're prescribed by an ophthalmologist or an optometrist that's licensed to do that, you're usually going to get a good pair of contact lenses. But on the market where people get colored contact lenses not through a licensed professional, the lenses may not be prepared sterilely, so you may be getting a lens that is not completely sterile. Why is that important? It may not fit normally, and it may be coated with bacteria. And contact lenses, in and of themselves, done the right way, have a risk of infection. But if you get colored contact lenses that are on a gray market, there is basically no safety standard that's used to prepare these lenses. These lenses run the risk of causing infection of the eye. What kind of infections? You can get not only abrasions, but you get corneal ulcers. And corneal ulcers can be from bad bacteria. Bad bacteria on cornea surfaces can cause sometimes treatable infections and sometimes not-so-treatable infections. If the bug is bad enough, you can get loss of your cornea, loss of vision, even loss of the eye. Colored contact lenses prescribed by nonlicensed folks that are perched on the gray market, and they are used during Halloween season, can pose significant health risk to the ocular surface in the eye itself.

Those are some of the main issues with Halloween things.