Are tempered safety glass shower panels safe?

What happened?

Recently a mother has posted on Facebook warning families not to install tempered glass in the toilet bathroom. Apparently the incident happened when her daughters was in the shower, the tempered glass door was being opened and it just shattered without warning.

When the girls parents went to investigate they found that the tempered glass shower panel has shattered into tiny pieces. The daughter was opening the tempered glass door when it broke into tiny glass pieces. One of the girls hugged her sister and protect her sibling from the glass bits. The parents found both their children bleeding.

Would you install safety glass panel in your bathe room? 

First and foremost what is the reason of installing a glass panel in the shower. We would say the most common reason would be to partition your toilet, where you shower in one side, and protecting the other side of the toilet from getting wet, thus creating a dry side of the toilet.

Another possible reason is perhaps the toilet is larger, while one person is showering , another person could be siting on the toilet bowl doing their “business”. The last thing the person doing their business would want would be to be sprayed with water coming from the shower area.

Whats the big difference between Normal Glass panel and Safety Glass Panel?

Normal glass panels are just, normal.. When it breaks, it breaks into shard pieces, sometimes this shard pieces can be large in size and be a danger to anyone nearby. This are usually very sharp and can cause major injuries to anyone if they are not careful.

Safety glass has been treated with heat to make the glass alot stronger compared to a normal glass. When the safety glass is broken it will shatter into tiny bits thus even if the glass bits do cut anyone they injuries would not be as bad as being cut by a large piece of normal glass.

WARNING! Safety glass bits are very sharp and can still hurt and injure a person and cause them to bleed.

So what can be done, to make safety glass “extra safe” ?

While reading up more about safety glass panels used in the shower area, some groups has advice to install a thin safety film onto the safety glass panel. What the film does is in the event the safety glass do shatter, the film will hold the glass pieces together. thus preventing the tiny glass pieces from flying and injuring anyone. Looking at the photos of this incident it looks as if there is no safety film installed onto this safety glass?

Could this be the reason why the poor sisters got cut and bleed badly?

If you have a safety glass panel at home, perhaps its best to check if there is such a safety film pasted onto the safety glass? Better to be safe than sorry.