safetysoldering
As far as I know soldering glasses are for eye protection against lead fume. As a personal experience I have observed some parts of lead with tiny explosion due to heat come out of lead with a smoke trace (I dont know what to call them in english).
There are different glasses with different price.
Which one should be used for soldering safety and in what range of price are they?
The developer is simply a dilute alkali, I use 12g of NaOH in a litre of water. It's quite safe but don't get it in your eyes and wash it off if you get it on the skin. Ferric chloride is quite safe, just wash it off if it gets on the skin. I always wear rubber gloves, both for protection and so that I can use hot etchant with manual agitation (I put the etchant and board in a small container in an old washing-up bowl with about 1" of just boiled water in it).
I've been making my own PCBs at home for about 40 years, using ferric chloride mostly. The only accident I've had that could have been serious was when I was walking across the room with an open bottle of conc. HCl in my hand, tripped, and a little splashed on my face next to an eye. I thought it might have got in the eye, but the fumes were bad enough. I immediately put my face under a tap and flushed the eye out for several minutes. It was sore for a few hours, but there was no damage.
Use a smoke extractor, don't lick your fingers, smoke or suck solder. Wash your hands afterwards. Sweep the bench and dispose of any debris in a waste bin (or a hazardous waste system if you really really really care).
The smoke is essentially wholly fumes from the flux. Any hazards from the lead (if you use lead based solder) come from getting metallic lead into your body. The risks are very small indeed if you use even basic common sense.
Many solder fume extractors and some more.
Even something this simple works well enough for most purposes.
What sort of extractor you need depends on how worried you are about the affects of the flux smoke. I have occasionally used fans similar to the one shown but in most cases have done substantial hand soldering without any sort of fume extractor. Others would probably not consider soldering without one.
A small desk fan will usually be more effective than a room's ceiling fan. A room fan will disperse smoke to some extent but tends to blow air rather than to suck and the air stream is lower velocity than you will achieve with a desk mounted fan. Ideally you would exhaust via a filter but an unfiltered fan as shown which simply keeps direct smoke away from the user will greatly reduce inhalation.
Best Answer
Flux spattering is not uncommon and if you're right up close it could spatter in your eye. Fumes are not so much a concern for eyes- more for breathing- and flux fumes, not lead (if you're even using lead-based solder). It's possible that you could get actual solder spattering in some kind of rare situation (trapped liquid or something) but it's very, very rare under normal conditions.
Since the splashes are tiny, existing eyeglasses, drugstore reading glasses or "Home Depot" (hardware/home improvement store) glasses work fine. Price range might be $2 and up.
The ideal kind might be the wrap around type. You can find various types here, for example:
Home Depot USA (in USD)
Home Depot Canada (in CAD)
If you're soldering small parts under a microscope you usually don't require safety glasses, but the objective lens may be protected with a transparent shield.