Myth Busting Monday: Should You Pull Out Something That’s Embedded in the Eye?
Written by Stephanie Austin, Owner and Lead Trainer, Prima Cura Training | Last reviewed: October 2026 | Next review: October 2027
If something is embedded in someone’s eye, leave it exactly where it is. The object may be the only thing currently holding the wound closed, and pulling it out can turn an injury a surgeon could have repaired into permanent damage.
| MYTH | “Get it out. You can’t just leave it in there.” The instinct is to remove the object fast, before it does any more damage. |
| FACT | An object embedded in the eye may be plugging a hole in the eye wall, and pulling it out can let the contents of the eye escape. NHS advice is “do not try to remove any object that’s pierced your eye”. Keep the person still, ask them not to move either eye, call 999, and let a hospital remove it under magnification, anaesthetic and sterile conditions. |
Back in 2021 I spent a long stretch delivering Emergency First Aid at Work to Covid test centre staff across England. A lot of sites, a lot of miles, and a lot of people who had been pulled into a frontline role from jobs that had nothing to do with health or care.
On one of those courses, at a site in London, somebody told me what had happened there a few weeks earlier.
A customer had come onto the site, fallen, and ended up with wood splinters in one eye. Not one splinter. Several.
A member of staff, who had never had any first aid training, sat the customer down outside, went and found a pair of tweezers, and picked the splinters out one at a time.
The customer went to hospital. They later developed an eye infection, which was put down to the splinters being dug out in the car park. There was no lasting damage beyond that, and they were fortunate, because it could have gone considerably worse.
The site booked that member of staff onto one of my courses. A few weeks later they were sat in front of me, and when we reached eye injuries I watched it land. They went very quiet. Afterwards they told me they felt sick about it. They had genuinely thought they were helping.
This myth doesn’t catch careless people. That’s exactly why it earns a post of its own.
Where does the urge to pull it out come from?
Because most of the time, taking something out of an eye is the correct answer.
An eyelash. Grit on a windy day. Sawdust, mascara, a fleck of something from the ceiling while you’re painting. Almost every object that ends up in an eye is sitting loose on the surface and comes out with a blink, a tear or a rinse. You do it, it works, you move on.
So we all build up years of evidence that things come out of eyes easily. The rare case, where the object has gone through the eye wall rather than landed on it, looks identical from a foot away.
Splinters are the worst offender of the lot, because we pull them out of fingers all week without a second thought. It’s the same instinct behind pulling glass out of a cut hand, which we covered in Should You Pull Glass Out of a Wound?.
What actually happens inside an eye when you pull something out?
Three things, and none of them are visible from the outside.
The object may be the plug. The eye is a sealed structure filled with fluid and held under pressure. The College of Optometrists describes penetrating trauma as a sharp object partly or fully breaking through the outer layer of the eye, either the cornea at the front or the sclera, the white part. If that’s happened, whatever went in is sitting in the hole it made. Take it out and the pressure inside has somewhere to go, and what escapes is not replaceable.
You cannot tell how deep it goes. A splinter standing a few millimetres proud of the surface might be resting on the white of the eye. It might be anchored much further in. Both look the same to the person holding the tweezers.
Pulling drags contamination inwards and scratches the cornea on the way. The cornea is the clear window you see through, and it scars. A scar sits permanently in the line of sight. Wood is a particularly unpleasant thing to have in an eye because it’s organic and porous and carries bacteria in with it, which is exactly how that customer in London ended up with an infection.
Pain is a poor guide here, too. A speck of grit under an eyelid can be agony. A metal fragment sitting inside the eye can be a dull ache.
Why do you have to keep the good eye still too?
Because the eyes move as a pair. They’re wired to track together, so when the uninjured eye looks across the room at a noise, the injured one goes with it.
That’s why “try not to move your eye” doesn’t work as an instruction. The person can’t do it. Both eyes have to stay still, and the practical way to manage that is to give them one thing to look at and then stay in front of them yourself, talking, so there’s nothing behind you worth turning towards.
Traditional first aid teaching goes further and covers both eyes. The reasoning is sound, but I’ll be honest about what I see in practice: covering the good eye of somebody who is already frightened and in pain tends to make them move about more, not less. Stillness comes from reassurance and from having something to focus on. If you do cover the uninjured eye, tell them first and keep talking to them the whole time.
What should you do instead?
- Leave the object completely alone. No tweezers, no fingers, no cloth, no attempt to rinse it off.
- Sit them down and keep them still, somewhere nobody walking past is going to knock them.
- Ask them to keep both eyes still, and explain why. Give them a fixed point to look at and stay in front of them.
- Don’t press anything against the eye. No pad, no pressure, nothing resting on the eyeball itself.
- Call 999. The NHS lists a sharp object piercing the eye as a reason to go straight to A&E or call an ambulance. Do what the call handler tells you.
- Watch their hands. People rub at their eyes without noticing, and that includes the injured one.
- Leave contact lenses where they are. Never try to take a lens out of an injured eye. Tell the call handler they’re wearing them.
- Keep talking. Their sight is compromised and they can’t look over to check you’re still there. Your voice is doing a lot of the work.
- Write it up afterwards if it happened at work. Time, mechanism, what was done. The hospital will want it and so will your incident record.
When is it fine to rinse an eye out?
When the object is loose on the surface and nothing went in at speed. That covers the overwhelming majority of things that end up in an eye.
NHS guidance for that situation is to wash the eye with clean water that isn’t hot, from a tap, a shower or a bottle, holding the eye open and running lots of water over the eyeball for at least 20 minutes, with the flow kept gentle. Afterwards, don’t rub the eye, don’t put make-up near it and don’t wear contact lenses until it’s better.
Chemicals run the other way. A strong chemical such as bleach or oven cleaner in the eye is an emergency, and rinsing is the treatment rather than a delaying tactic. Flood the eye at a tap or an eye wash station for at least 20 minutes, and keep rinsing while somebody else calls 999. Take the product, or a photo of the label, to hospital. Moorfields Eye Hospital classes a chemical burn as needing immediate attention, alongside a perforated globe and an intraocular foreign body.
Stop and get help rather than rinsing if any of these apply:
- Anything is stuck in the eye, sticking out of it, or won’t shift
- Something hit the eye at speed
- Sight has changed at all since the injury
- There’s severe pain, a headache, or sensitivity to light
- They feel sick or are being sick after an eye injury
- They can’t move the eye or can’t keep it open
- Blood or pus is coming from the eye
Those are all NHS thresholds for A&E or 999. Separately, contact 111 or a GP if an eye injury isn’t getting better after 24 hours, if it’s very painful, or if you’re just worried, particularly with a child.
The eye injury with nothing to see
This is the one that gets missed, and it’s worth the space.
When something hits an eye at high speed, a fragment can pass through the eye wall and leave an entry point too small to spot. There may be no visible object, no obvious bleeding, and the person may tell you it stopped hurting after a minute. The classic causes are metal on metal: an angle grinder, a hammer on a chisel, a drill, a strimmer throwing up stone chips.
For a first aider that translates into one rule: the mechanism is the red flag, not the appearance. If something hit somebody’s eye at speed, it needs looking at properly even if the eye looks normal and they’re insisting they’re fine. The NHS says the same, listing high speed impacts from power tools or mowing the lawn as a reason for A&E.
Worth having that conversation before it happens, because the person who has just caught a fragment off a grinder almost always wants to carry on working.
What this looks like in a training room
The question that always comes is some version of “but the hospital is only going to pull it out anyway, so what difference does it make?”
Every difference, and the answer is conditions. The hospital removes it under magnification, with the eye anaesthetised, in a sterile field, with a surgeon standing by who can repair the hole that comes with it. A car park, a pair of tweezers and good intentions offer none of that.
I’ve never met anybody who did this out of arrogance. It’s always somebody doing their best with the only tool to hand, usually while a frightened person begs them to get it out. That member of staff at the London test centre wasn’t careless. Nobody had ever told them, which is a training gap rather than a character flaw, and it takes about four minutes to close.
Frequently asked questions
Should you remove an object embedded in someone’s eye?
No. NHS advice is not to try to remove any object that has pierced the eye. An embedded object may be plugging a hole in the eye wall, and removing it can allow the contents of the eye to escape, scar the cornea and carry contamination further in. It should be removed in hospital under sterile conditions.
Can you wash something out of your eye?
Yes, if it is loose on the surface and nothing has entered the eye at speed. NHS advice is to hold the eye open and run lots of clean, cool water over the eyeball for at least 20 minutes, keeping the flow gentle. Never rinse an eye that has an object embedded in it.
Should you cover both eyes after an eye injury?
The eyes move together, so keeping the uninjured eye still helps keep the injured one still. Covering both eyes is traditional first aid teaching, but covering the good eye of a frightened person can make them move more rather than less. Giving them a fixed point to look at, staying in front of them and talking to them achieves the same result more reliably.
Should contact lenses be removed after an eye injury?
Do not attempt to remove a contact lens from an eye with an object embedded in it or any suspected penetrating injury, because it risks further damage. NHS advice is not to wear contact lenses until the eye is better. Tell the emergency call handler or the hospital that the person is wearing lenses.
Training that covers the injuries nobody expects
Eye injuries take up a small part of a first aid course and they’re one of the bits people remember longest, because the correct answer is so far from the instinct. Four minutes of teaching stops somebody reaching for the tweezers.
Emergency First Aid at Work (EFAW) is the one most workplaces need for a designated first aider, and higher risk settings, including anywhere with grinding, cutting, drilling or chemicals, usually need the three day First Aid at Work qualification instead. Schools should look at Emergency First Aid for Schools, and anyone working with young children needs Emergency Paediatric First Aid or the two day Paediatric and Early Years First Aid for Ofsted compliance. For a small team who just want the practical basics, Basic First Aid covers it.
If you’re not sure what your organisation needs, our Workplace First Aid UK Guide walks through needs assessments and qualification levels. Give us a call on 0333 999 8783 or drop us a message and we’ll help you work it out.
THE VERDICT: BUSTED
Leave it in. Keep them still. Call 999. Three things, none of them difficult, and between them they protect an eye that nobody can replace.
This article is provided for general information and awareness only and reflects NHS and UK clinical guidance current as at September 2026. It does not constitute medical advice, and it is not a substitute for accredited, hands-on first aid training. Guidance can change, and how it applies depends on the individual and the circumstances of the injury. Any object embedded in the eye, any high speed impact to the eye and any chemical splash needs urgent medical assessment. In an emergency, always call 999.
