History and Objectives of the Sport
Early Marketing of Paintball
What Is Happening Today to Ensure Eye Safety
Eye Injury Facts
What You Can Do to Prevent a Paintball Eye Injury
References

History and Objectives of the Sport

The sport itself is young, having been first played by a group of 12 businessmen in 1981, but today it is played in more than 60 countries and by nearly six million people in the United States. Paintball combines features of the games "tag" and "capture the flag."

The object of the game is to capture the opponent's flag and hang it on a designated home base, meanwhile eliminating opposing players from the game by "marking" them with paintballs. A paintball is a gelatin sphere 17mm in diameter and weighing 3.5 grams. It is filled with a water soluble, non-toxic dye. Paintballs are shot by a type of air gun known as a marker (or, alternatively, paintgun or paintball gun) at velocities up to 200 mph.

Rules, referees, boundaried fields, and a mandatory player safety-briefing and orientation are all standard at paintball fields worldwide.

Unfortunately, many blinding eye injuries occurred in the early days of the sport, primarily due to participants not wearing goggles, but there also were cases of goggle failure. ^1-6

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Early Marketing of Paintball

One of the 12 first-game (1981) players formed a company, National Survival Game (NSG), to market paintball. Paintball was often referred to as The Survival Game, War Game, or Gotcha in coverage by national media. NSG obtained game-field insurance which mandated players had to be 18 years of age and had to use goggles. NSG developed a water-based non-toxic colorful fill for the paintballs to replace the original oil-base fill. By 1986, due to growth in the sport, players could choose from among several brands of markers and paintballs.

After 1986-87 the increased use of chronographs to measure paintball speeds made it possible to set speed limits. The international speed limit today, as in 1988, for all .68 caliber (17mm) paintball markers, is 300 feet per second (91.5 meters per second) or approximately 200 mph measured as the paintball leaves the marker. The further the distance from the marker, the more slowly the paintball travels and the lower its impact energy. Yet when a paintball impacts the unprotected eye, the result is almost always severe eye damage and often blindness in that eye.

Although the game's safety rules have always mandated the use of goggles, the rules were not always strictly enforced. The goggles used in the sport prior to 1987, and even beyond that year for a short period, were for the most part industrial safety goggles, shooting glasses, or motorcycle, ski, or dust goggles. Yet no goggles had been tested for effectiveness in paintball, and industrial goggles bear the warning that they are not designed for sports use. ⁷

Players wearing these goggles were injured because:

• lens retention was inadequate and allowed the entire goggle lens to be knocked into the eye

• entire goggle was inadequately retained on the head, allowing a paintball impact to the unprotected eye

• goggle sealed poorly around the eyes, allowing large fragments of shell from a paintball that impacted near the goggle to find a pathway into the eye

• goggle was improperly modified by enlarging the air vents, against factory instructions, allowing shell fragments to get into the eye through the enlarged air vents

• some other pathway into the eye occurred, other than through the lens proper ^8,9

In 1994, The American Society for Testing and Materials Eye Safety Subcommittee (http://www.ia-usa.org/k0043.htm) established a task force to write standard specifications for paintball eye-protection devices. The standard, ASTM F1776, was published in 1997.

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What Is Happening Today to Ensure Eye Safety

As a continued part of an industry-wide and consumer concern for preventing eye injuries, players, manufacturers, sports officials, laboratories, insurance companies, the paintball media, and Eye M.D.s (ophthalmologists) have joined forces to establish an eye injury prevention program ^10,11 that includes standards for field operation (ASTM F1777), paintballs (ASTM F1979) and other paintball equipment, in addition to the protective eyewear (ASTM F1776) standard. ¹²

Some for-profit companies and non-profit associations have programs to teach safety, including:

• Paintball Training Institute (PTI) (http://www.paintball-teh.com/directory10.htm)
• World Paintball Federation (WPF) (http://www.wpfonline.com)
• Pan American Amateur Paintball Circuit (PanAm) (http://www.panamcircuit.com)
• American Paintball League (APL) (http://www.paintball-apl.com)
• European Paintball Sports Federation

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Eye Injury Facts

• Serious eye injuries, including blindness, are the primary catastrophic injury from paintball, a sport played by approximately 6 million people from age 10 to over 70, with the bulk of the players from age 12 to 34.

• Blinding eye injuries can occur, and these incidents occur largely (a) when a person in an area where paintball is being played fails to wear or removes his or her paintball goggles, particularly in unsupervised situations, or fails to wear proper eye protection, and (b) in criminal assault circumstances outside the sport, such as in a drive-by assault shooting. Please note that existing criminal laws are readily applied to those who misuse paintball markers, as in a drive-by shooting, with felony assault being among the crimes that can be charged.

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What You Can Do to Prevent a Paintball Eye Injury

• Only play paintball on a field that conforms to ASTM F1777 standards for field operation.

• ALWAYS wear goggles that conform to ASTM F1776. Do not remove goggles for any reason while playing.

• Make sure you are aware of the rules, and are taken through a safety briefing and orientation before the start of the game.

• Talk with your Eye M.D. (ophthalmologist) about the risk of eye injury from paintball, and what you can do to protect your vision.

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References

1. Easterbrook M, Pashby TJ: Eye injuries associated with war games. Can Med Assoc J. 1985;133:415-417.
2. Acheson JF, Griffiths MF, Cooling RJ: Serious eye injuries due to war games. BMJ. 1989; 298:26.
3. Dawidek GMB: Serious eye injuries due to war games. BMJ. 1989; 298:383.
4. Ryan EH, Lissner G: Eye injuries during "war games." Arch Ophthalmol.1986; 104:1435-1436.
5. Mamalis N, Monson MC, Farnsworth St, White GL: Blunt ocular trauma secondary to war games. Ann Ophthalmol. 1990;22:416-418.
6. Welsh NH, Howes F, Lever J: Eye injuries associated with war games. S Afr Med J. 1989;16:270-271.
7. American National Standard Practice for Occupational and Educational Eye and Face Protection: ANS1 Z87.1-1989 (r1998). New York. American National Standards Institute, 1989 (r 1998).
8. Thach AB, Ward TP, Hollifield RD, et. al. Ocular injuries from paintball pellets. Ophthalmology 1999;105,533-547.
9. Fineman MS, Fischer DH, Jeffers JB, Buerger DG, Repke C. Changing trends in paint ball sport related ocular injuries. Arch Ophthalmol. 2000 Jan;118(1):60-4
10. Vinger PF, Sparks JJ, Mussack KR, Dondero J, Jeffers J: A program to prevent eye injuries in paintball. SportsVision 1997; 13:33-40.
11. McGuire RC: Paintball field operators' operating procedures. American Paintball League. Johnson City, TN; 1992, 53.
12. American Society of Testing and Materials. ASTM. 100 Barr Harbor Drive. West Conshohocken, PA 19428-2959.
    F1776-99a Standard Specification for Eye Protective Devices for Paintball Sports
    F1777-97 Standard Practice for Paintball Field Operation
    F1979-99 Standard Specification for Paintballs Used in the Sport of Paintball
    F2041-00 Standard Specification for Paintball Marker Warnings
    F2030-00 Standard Specification for Paintball Cylinder Burst Disk Assemblies
    F1750-96 Standard Specification for Paintball Gun Threaded-Propellant Source Interface

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