We interrupt your regular programming to bring you this very important consumer report.

Due to a grocery store mishap, I ended up with Clear Care, a new saline solution I was apprehensive about trying. Clear Care comes with a rounded contact stand that you screw into a small cylinder full of the solution – I’m sure you’ve seen the sort. Aside from the cap being difficult to unscrew (and therefore not nice to the fingers) and the contacts slipping off their stand on a regular basis, I enjoyed how shiny and protein-free my contacts were this morning.

So it gets my contacts clean, but at what cost? If I sleepily forgot and squirted that junk in my eye, what the heck would happen? Obviously, it was the potential side effects that worried me.

I, like most people, was used to the nice, comforting, blue-tinted scheme of my saline solution’s bottle. It seems to say, “Hello. I’m here to clean your lenses. I’m simple to use, and I wish you no harm.”

Not so much with Clean Care…

The Label reads (clockwise from top): DO NOT PUT CLEAR CARE DIRECTLY IN EYE; USE ONLY LENS CASE PROVIDED; DO NOT RINSE LENS WITH CLEAN CARE PRIOR TO INSERTION. ...and to think I almost threw this label away.

The bottle is covered in angry red warning labels, like the entire Clean Care legal department was on this case. The thing is, Clean Care isn’t a “sterile solution,” it probably doesn’t have a neutral pH, so when they say wait six hours before inserting lenses, WAIT SIX HOURS BEFORE INSERTING LENSES.

Other intimidating warnings informed me of potential temporary skin discoloration when handling the product, a caveat that – combined with a terrifying hissing noise Clean Care makes as it begins to clean your lenses – makes you worry less about your hands and more about what would happen if you slipped up and PUT CLEAN CARE DIRECTLY IN YOUR EYE. I mean, this stuff could clearly erode a prison cell’s bars within six hours if it wanted to (“Dear MythBusters, …”). So, what would happen if you used Clean Care prior to insertion or put it directly in your eye?

Tiny Bubbles of Death: "What's that smell? ...is that a chemical burn?!?!"

Dustin Riley, my correspondent in the field, told me exactly what happens if it gets in your eye. I was just finishing warning him to bring his own saline solution next time he visits when he said that yeah, he’s accidentally used another person’s non-sterile solution before. He described the situation, saying that there was a fleeting moment of stillness and quiet before his optic nerves realized just what was happening to them.  Then the fiend was upon him, he was probably seeing red quite literally, and, “though there was no lasting damage, it stung like a mother.”

So. While considering this or any similar product, I advise you to either stick with a sterile saline solution that – let’s face it – keeps your lenses clean enough anyway, or – in the sage words of Mad-Eye Moody – practice “CONSTANT VIGILANCE” while using Clean Care. Some angry red warning labels tell me their lawyers won’t be too sympathetic if you don’t.