Wearing goggles, rinsing cut surfaces, or choosing non-pungent varieties can mitigate the irritating effects of onions.

“The fact that they're volatile means that you can protect yourself by doing a couple of different things. You can wear goggles, which prevent volatile molecules from getting to your eyes. You can do the cutting interspersed with just a rinse in water because the molecules are being generated at the surface that you're generating by doing the cutting. If, occasionally, you rinse those surfaces, then the volatiles go away, and they don't bother you as much. You can also get non-pungent varieties of onions, which exist. Maui onions are the best known of those.”