A teen from St. Clare Shores, Michigan, has suffered partial blindness in her right eye after using a pair of $26 colored contact lenses that she bought from a store at the Mt. Clemens' Gibraltar Trade Center for Halloween.

17-year-old Leah Carpenter, a senior in Lakeview High School, planned to use the contact lenses to compliment her zombie costume for a Halloween event at her school. What supposed to be a fun, eventful day took a painful turn as the said cosmetic contact lense damaged her right eye.

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Dawn Carpenter, Leah's mother, said it was unbelievable to watch her daughter's suffering helplessly. The contact lenses reportedly damaged her cornea, partially blinding her in the right eye.

Leah said that she bought the contact lenses from a popular place so she didn't think much of it. "It was just for show. That was our theme for the day. I wasn't thinking anything would go wrong," she explained.

This Halloween, the use of decorative contact lenses as part of the costumes has been a major trend. Teens and even adults are going at it as part of their costumes for the yearly event. Contact lenses seem to be a must-have whether you are in for a living-dead look, a cat woman, a superhero, or a villain.  These contact lenses usually come in cheap and have no approval from the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), which means they could be harmful to the consumers.

Over 5,000 pairs of contact lenses have been seized by the authorities recently, who have branded them as unapproved, illegal and unsafe. Some of these products have been tested and confirmed to be contaminated with bacteria. Normally, contact lenses are acquired with prescription from an ophthalmologist after an evaluation. So the procedure and maintenance like cleaning and which solution would be appropriate to use is provided by a medical professional

Lately, cheap contact lenses have been making their rounds in the market, and officials suspects that the suppliers and producers of these products are abroad. Authorities have warned against patronizing unprescribed contact lenses as they could be hazardous. 

Word of advice: Take extra precaution on those contact lenses this Halloween.

TagsHalloween, Halloween costumes, Contact lenses