Here’s to beer in your eye

About 20 percent of people in a recent survey admitted to cringe-worthy behavior: soaking their contact lenses in “alternative” solutions.

Among the most disturbing: butter and petroleum jelly.

Bausch + Lomb, a contact lens company, issued a press release this week to promote its new multi-purpose solution, Biotrue. The news release included information about contact-wearers habits, including the use of “alternative” solutions.

The survey found 20 percent of respondents had occasionally used unconventional solutions when they needed to clean, disinfect and store their contact lenses.

The unconventional solutions included some almost understandable alternatives like water and saliva. (As a contact-wearer, I’ll admit, I’ve used water and drinking glasses when I found myself without my contact solution.)

But they also included alternatives that would make most contact-wearers cringe and hide their peepers. Alternatives like baby oil, beer, Coke, petroleum jelly, lemonade, fruit juice and butter.

“These alternatives are in no way designed for use in the human eye and are not safe alternatives for contact lens solutions,” the eye care company said in its statement.

In fact, they can be dangerous.

Saliva, for example, exposes a persons eye to the 500 to 650 different types of bacteria in the average adult mouth. Tap and distilled water may contain micro-organisms that could damage the eye.

Better to set aside the beer and just stick to contact solution.