Where and where not to buy your Halloween costume contact lenses

Halloween is creeping up and many people are planning their costumes. A lot of ideas include buying colorful contact lenses to finish off the outfit.

However, cheap costume contact lenses can be bad for your eyes. Doctors say if you don’t know how to properly handle them, stay away.

“If we have someone who’s familiar with wearing contact lenses, that understands to wash their hands before and after handling contact lenses, and knows how to get them in and make sure they fit, contact lenses for Halloween can be really fun,” said Dr. Aaron Affleck, owner of Affleck MD Eye Care.

Contact lenses from non-approved sellers can have toxic chemicals or cheap material that can starve your eyes of oxygen. Also, dirty lenses can scratch your eye — and all this can lead to infection.

“They did have some cases where some people lost their eye from a bad eye infection,” Affleck said.

Therefore, the Food and Drug Administration says to only get contact lenses from a licensed prescriber.

“And so they tried to reduce contact lenses being sold at gas stations and party stores and different things like that because of the risk for infections,” Affleck said.

If you do come across costume-type lenses at beauty stores, gas stations, and from unapproved online sites —

“Well, they would be very suspect, that they would be poor quality and probably a risk for having complications,” Affleck said.

You can still wear a convincing cat costume without the yellow and black eyes, or be a zombie without bloodshot eyes; but if you are sold on getting new eyes to go with your costume, look for FDA approved or prescription lenses, and be sure you know how to care for them.