Safety eyewash package and container therefor

Claim 1

A container useful for a sealed emergency safety eyewash package in which liquid, that is essentially water, is in the container, said container having a volumetric capacity of about one pint and consisting essentially of: a front wall and a flexible rear wall constituting at least a major portion of the walls of the container; and a removable aqueous-impervious strip of material overlying only and secured only on a central longitudinal band of the outer surface of said front wall, said front wall being flexible to conform, when said container is sealed with water in it and after said strip has been removed, generally to the contour of an upper part of the human face, that includes the nose and both eyes, said front wall having holes only underlying and covered only by said strip, said holes being present as two sets, each of said sets having dimensions corresponding generally to an area overlying a human eye and said sets being spaced from each other a distance such that the distance between the center of each set is about the interpupillary distance for a human, said container when sealed and containing water and with said strip removed, being: impervious to water except at said holes; and constructed to permit movement of said rear wall toward said front wall restrained against further forward movement by the upper part of the human face, said holes in said two sets of holes in said front wall have dimensions that, for the sealed emergency eyewash package with said strip removed, are: sufficiently small to preclude any substantial passage of water through said holes in said front wall; and sufficiently large to provide rapid streams of water flow from said holes during the period of time that, while said holes are overlying the eyes and other portions of said front wall are being flexed by pressing said front wall against the upper part of the human face, said rear wall is moved toward said front wall, said container further including a strap mounted on said rear wall of said container with said strap having a length so that fingers of a hand can be placed between the rear wall and the intermediate portion of said strap for manual support of said container and movement of it toward the face of the individual using the eyewash package after removal of said strip, said strap extending in a direction transverse to the direction of said strip at a plane passing through said strip between and generally equidistant from said sets of holes.