[DCHAS-L] Eye injuries from dissection of preserved specimens

I got the following inquiry from one of my colleagues:

Do you have any figures for how many eye injuries per year come from animal dissections in instructional labs?  Or something similar to that?  I'm wondering this because when I observed Dr. X dissecting a cadaver, I noticed that the tissue is moist to preserve the body, but there are no "puddles" or "pocket" of preservative that I noticed.  I know there have been documented cases of formaldehyde-based preservatives getting in people's eyes, but I can't seem to find any statistics on it.

 

Does anyone have any information on this?  I suspect an appeal is being made to relax the requirement to wear eye protection when dissecting and my colleague would like to provide rationale for its use based on past performance (which is no guarantee of future results).

 

Thank you,