Cleaning RGPS with fairy liquid

[rajeh]

I was just wandering if anyone could tell me how you are washing your contacts with fairy liquid.

Do you just use fairy liquid and rinse with tap water? And then again with another solution? Its just im worried about using tap water to wash my lenses and I'd rather find out from someone whose done it before how it works.

[rosemary johnson]

Hi Rajeh!
Beware!! Mentioning the Fairy Liquid words will get you a string of horrified posts from those who don't like the idea! - wehter just the sound of it, or the "professionals", or those who sell the purpose made lens cleaning stuff...
VERY IMPORTANT: TO ANYONE ELSE READING THIS - this practice is for HARD!!! contact lenses only. That is, those made of RGP - Rigid Gas Permeable pulymers, PMMA/Perspex, or glass (if anyone still has glass lenses...). Do NOT!!!! attempt to clean soft, or combination hard/soft lenses in anything except solutions for cleaning soft lenses.
OK.
I've been cleaning my RGP scleral lenses, and before them PMMA lenses, in washing up liquid for years, and with full knowledge adn approval of my contact lens fitter.
WHose ratioanle is that that stuff does the job, and if people are going to use something that is cheap, readily available from any supermarket and plentiful, and they're going to have about the house for doing the dishes anyway, they're likely to slap the stuff on and do a good job of it, and get the lenses really properly celan. Whereas people who are paying extortionate prices for lens cleaners that tend to disappear suddenly with supply problems, they tend to try to "economise" and skimp on it, and don't get the lens as clean as they should always.
yes, you have to rinse the stuff off properly. But then, you have to rinse the stuff off properly if you're using lens cleaners, and that stuff can hang around some. ANyone remember the onld white milky Boston clearner? Tried that once, must have been using gallons of running water to rinse it away, and my hands still smelled of it for half the morning!
I digress.
To answer your direct question:
I have two modus operandi:
1. wash hands, damp lens under running water (from cold tap in kitchen, of the rising main), apply squirt of FL, rub FL around with fingers so it's well lathery and goes all over lens. Wash fingers, then lens, under running tap till all lather gone and no remaining soapy feeling. Shake excess water off lens and fingers. APply wetting solution, smear all over lens on both sides, rinse excess off with running water, then rinse water off with saline. Turn lens right way up and (if not symmetrical) right way round, fill to brim with saline, insert.
2. remove lens from eye, rinse off excess muscous, etc, under running water, apply squirt of FL, wash well as above, rinse off all FL lather etc under running water, dry lens on celan tissue, wrap in piece of clean tissue and put away in case.
I normally aim to wash the lens just before I put it in, rather than after I take it out, partly becasue of the problems of not getting any sticky fingermarks on it while wrapping/unwrapping so it has to be cleaned again, and partly habit from the days of gong to bed with lens still in so could sit up and read in bead and then take lens out and lie down to sleep straight away (now tend to read without lenses).
THis is all at home in UK with expensively-treated drinking water coming from the tap. On a few occasions when I've been travelling and not confident of the water supply, I've poured bowls of water either from bottled mineral water (!) or from the filter jugs everyone used to take gubbins out of the tap water where I was in Africa. Generally I've been more worried about water coming from taps brown and with sand in that might scratch the lens.
Maybe I've been lucky, but I've had a grand total of 3 eye infections in my life (I'm 47) of which one was when I was 6 an dhad measles (!) and the other two came at the end of long strings of respiratory illnesses when my resistance was pretty well shot up (and I hadn't been wearing lenses much anyway).
There.
HOpe that answers your question. We will now get a whole string of people throwing up their hands in horror and entreating me to do nothing so silly......... etc etc.
And I can just hear Ken laughing as he reads this thread.
Rosemary

[Andrew MacLean]

I feel like posting a warning on this string! Rosemary has strayed into these waters before.

For now, let it be noted that lens manufacturers do not recommend the use of washing up liquid in the care of their lenses. Specialist lens cleaning fluids, along with saline solution, should be used. In the United Kingdom these can be bought from many supermarkets, or some of them can be sourced online.

Welcome to the forum.

Andrew

[Anne Klepacz]

Well, you did ask for horrified replies, Rosemary, so here's mine. As I've said before on this forum, there is a particularly nasty lurgy that is sometimes found in tap water which can cause blindness. So whatever you do, please DON'T use tap water to rinse off lenses. Is it really worth the risk of losing your sight to save some money on solutions?!
Anne

[rajeh]

Thanks for the responses!

And thats why i asked about tap water, I have tried a lot of different types of solutions for my lenses but most of them irritate my eyes afterwards. After i've used the cleaning solutions etc for my rgps i still use my saline solution that I used to use for my monthly lenses.

But thank you for all the replys.

Love you all
And i get where your coming from

[GarethB]

I react to lens solutions but am OK with the preservative free saline.

Clean lenses in normal solutions and then throughly rinse evrything off with the saline and put in normal storage solution.

When putting lenses in, the storage solution is thoroughly rinsed with preservative free saline again.

Then to get any reasonable lens wear I need comfort/lubricating eye drops too.

[pepepepe]

Tap water is a No, No - everyones would say so in eye care (saline from asda is next to nothing in costs) on the other hand Fairy liquid makes sense (its got antibacterial properties to it and is "gentle on your hands" - as said it he TV Ads.

Its one of the "Tips of the Trade" in KC, a gem from the "olden days" which still works today and those in the know - know, but consult your contact lens specialist "before trying it at home"

Pepe

[rosemary johnson]

'scuse me mentioning this....

there seems to be a confusion here between a0 cleaning with washing up liquid and b) rinsing off cleaner with tap water.
You will note from my previous post that I don't put something into my eye without rinsing off with the saline any tap water that has previously rinsed off any cleaner.
Apart from any infection risk, sticking something in one's eye still covered in ordinary water will sting as it is the wrong concentration - ie. it doesn't not match the saltiness of one's own body fluids.
As regards reinsing off cleaner with tap water - this is nothing to do with washing up liquid per se - commercial cleaners need to be rinsed off lenses just as thoroughly, and can take just as much quantity of liquid to do so.
Were I still to be using the Boston cleaner, I'd be needing to rinse it well off the lens after use.
I hope no-one seriously thinks one can rinse that stuff off a lens with a couple of squirts of amidose!!!!! - at least, it the formulation I last tried; maybe it has changed?
I recon it must have taken a couple of gallons of water to gt the reek off the stuff off the lens - and my fingers still smelled of it for ages afterwards.
Sorry it I sound penny pinching, but anyone who thinks I'm going to use 2 gallons of Amidose rinsing a commercial cleaner off my lens every morning has never tried lugging the stuff home on London Transport!
Incidentally I do sometimes wonder how many people there are in the world how complain about sore stinging eyes and problems with contact lenses and who are not rinsing their cleaner away throughly.
In summary, then:
Can one rinse off a cleaner (any cleaner) with tap water?
In my experience
1. if you're reasonably confident about the quality of the tap water then yes - but clean or rinse off the tap water before inserting the lens
2. if you have any reason to think the tap water may be dodgy, then boil it, filter it or don't
3. I've been doing this for 32 years and never had any problems with it;maybe I'm lucky
4. Whatever you use to do it with, make sure you rinse off the cleaner, whatever cleaning fluid you use, thoroughly.
Rosemary

[rosemary johnson]

Thanks for the responses!

And thats why i asked about tap water, I have tried a lot of different types of solutions for my lenses but most of them irritate my eyes afterwards. After i've used the cleaning solutions etc for my rgps i still use my saline solution that I used to use for my monthly lenses.

But thank you for all the replys.

Love you all
And i get where your coming from

Hi Rajeh,
That sounds suspiciously as if you're not rinsing off the cleaner well enough.
So whatever you decide to use to rinse off the cleaner with, and whatever cleaner you're using, try using more of it, and whooshing it around more (as it were).
Rosemary

[dweezil1968]

sorry but I think its really irresponsible to have this sort of thread and replies- tap water and washing up liquid? this is totally ridiculous.
I would only ever use proper solutions, and I if I have to go without something in order to afford the right solutions then so be it. I already pay £51 every time I get a new lens for the right eye from the NHS, that's life!
there are reasons why our lens have proper solutions made for them, use them accordingly!!!