Laser bad press heats up

How far can this go? We could be like Australia!

We're already like Australia.. as I just said in post #13 almost all of the commercial pointers/portables that we see here are already illegal. The most power you're legally allowed to purchase or import into the US is 5mW. That's not very much more than the 1mW the Australia allows.

ElektroFreak said:

We're already like Australia.. as I just said in post #13 almost all of the commercial pointers/portables that we see here are already illegal. The most power you're legally allowed to purchase or import into the US is 5mW. That's not very much more than the 1mW the Australia allows.

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True, but Australia enforces their law vigorously. Increased laser awareness may prompt more strict enforcement here. I don't think any Arctics made it to Australia.

Extract from the AP article:

[Quote {sic}] "His agency recommends that consumers make sure laser pointer labels carry a designation of Class IIIa or lower, along with a statement of compliance with Chapter 21 CFR. Hewett suggests consumers should look on the label to make sure the power output is no more than 5 milliwatts, or 5 mW.

But he stressed that even a laser product that meets those conditions can cause eye damage if a person stares into the beam long enough.

"Just because it says 5 mW and Class IIIa, FDA is not saying you can grab this laser and stare at it," he said. " [End quote]


I know it qulaifies the statement in the last line but doesn't the highlighted comment make you want to try that!

The question I ask myself is what's, 'long enough', ... ?

Surely the responsible thing would have been to say something about keeping lasers out of your eye full stop as they can all be damaging.

I'm just picking really. Heat of the moment comment from Mr. Hewett probably.


60mW? Doing damage whilst being scanned after what is likely to be a rear surface bathroom mirror? Both eyes? Several times? Would that really do that kind of damage?

He must have done a bit of direct staring, no? Hmmm. The eye doctor said that after two weeks he couldn't count fingers at three feet. No IQ test results for the boy unfortunately but I want to know if he could count fingers at three feet before this?!!!

Sad incident but this laser could in fact have been labelled as 5mW so was the kid really responsible in that case?

M

The one bright spot is that even if there are heavier restrictions on lasers, the consumer products that use them, projectors, disk burners/players etc. will not be banned, nor will OEM components receive much attention either.

So the hard-core laser enthusiasts who are willing to do their own builds won't be inconvenienced as much as the casual buyers of complete products.

It might be just an excuse to implement new laws. Its been done before many times, and on higher levels. If there is no problem people usually dont care. But put an incident in the equation, and there is an uproar to do something about it.

I highly doubt that damage was from a couple of passes from a reflection. I also doubt he pointed it at his eyes. My 50mW green (maybe higher) is really bright. There is no way I could hold that thing to my eye, let alone doing both.

ZapU said:

True, but Australia enforces their law vigorously. Increased laser awareness may prompt more strict enforcement here. I don't think any Arctics made it to Australia.

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TBH if our enforcement was stepped up to the point that ALL commercial laser pointers that don't meet CDRH regs cannot be imported AT ALL without customs seizing them it still won't be the death of the hobby. There will still be DIY parts available, OEM parts will still be excluded from any ban, so people who build their own pointers/portables will still have that ability. OEM parts are perfectly legal everywhere no matter what the power level.

Even in Australia OEM lasers of ANY power level intended for use in a build of some sort are NOT banned. That means people can still get diodes, drivers, complete green laser modules for portables/pointers, lab modules.. the VAST majority of items that most people in the hobby want.

The 5mw rule only applies to pointers! If the laser is NOT intended to be a pointer it is exempt.

^correct, as long as it isn't used in public outside of a CDRH approved enclosure with all necessary safety feaatures and without a variance..

Just a quick comment... As I said before, I have in fact had a few stupid slip ups with my own lasers over the years. My first big whoops was shortly after I did a couple of minor modifications to my Leadlight green pointer and like the moron I so was back then, I took a nice specular hit from aiming it out a window. I guestimate that at the time it was doing somewhere between 30 to 50 milliwatts, and the reflection was a good direct hit, albeit brief. I was VERY worried about it for a couple of weeks, but nothing ever came of it except a relatively long lasting "sunspot" in that eye.

My second major whoops was actually not long ago... I was tweaking the design for my Athena high power red, and did a current drain test and took a good specular hit from the beam striking the backside of a potentiometer laying on the desk. Again, I was very worried about it, especially considering that red laser goes around 200mW. For a time afterward, I seemed to be able to see an afterimage of part of a rounded shape, under certain circumstances. I've been unable to prove or disprove that I did any permanent damage, but next time I go for contact lenses I intend to have them look for such things.

The definitive all time stupid slip was a fluorescence test in a glass of iced tea, using my 445nm "Diana" blue laser. At that time, THANKFULLY, I had not yet made the design improvements that have allowed it to peak out at just around one full watt. I'm unsure of what I actually took into my eye, but I would think that the beam power was anywhere from 300 to 500 milliwatts. I had aimed it down into the glass, and like the idiot I am, for some reason I looked down into the glass when I fired the laser. The pulse was short, but there was of course a brilliant flash of light, very dazzling, in my right eye. I had again a relatively long lasting sunspot effect, but it did fade away.

With these three major accidents and several far more minor hits and various observations of superbright dots on various surfaces, I do not notice any loss in visual acuity that I can't attribute to other things like astigmatism or the fact that my eyes are changing with age. The only thing I ever notice are some speckle spots that only seem to appear when I am first waking up in the morning, and not every time. I also suffer from spots that come and go in my vision when I am under stress (could be burst capillaries from high blood pressure, or early signs of macular degeneration, or any number of visual ailments... I do need to have that checked out), and so it's possible that these waking spots I see are actually cumulative damage from some other cause than my hobby with lasers. I deal with it fine, it's just something that is "there" right now. The point is this: I've had my share of real accidents with very real, high power lasers, and I am not bumping into walls or unsure of how many fingers someone is holding up. My vision seems no worse to me than it has in years, really, and I don't detect any loss or alteration of color perception either. I guess I am saying, or maybe reiterating, that this kid most likely deliberately pointed that laser INTO his eyes to see what it would look like, and probably tolerated it a bit to see what he could stand. If a momentary back reflection off a liquid surface of a half watt laser didn't leave me noticeably visually damaged, then how did this kid manage catastrophic damage from much less power? I get it, it was a mirror... but still... seems really fishy to me that he not only did severe damage, he did it REPEATEDLY. It comes off like either the act of someone impaired mentally by drugs or alcohol, or the act of someone severely uninformed of what he was doing to himself. My opinion is, that this being the world of commonly available high power lasers, education is a MUST, and focusing instead on elimination of the threat isn't really the best way to approach the situation.

</soapbox>

- NR

Oh... wait... I sorta somehow forgot that I am incapable of quick comments... lol!

NightRunner417 said:

Oh... wait... I sorta somehow forgot that I am incapable of quick comments... lol!

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We call those bricks.

NightRunner, you were just lucky. The "luck" will only remain using appropriate protective eye-wear.

millirad said:

NightRunner, you were just lucky. The "luck" will only remain using appropriate protective eye-wear.

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I know it... I have two pair of goggles, one for the reds and one that covers greens and blues... Just sometimes I either am wanting to see visually specific things like was the case with the blue beam fluorescing in the tea, or am... being... lazy. That's not so much the case with the red lasers, though. My red laser protection goggles are really dense and I can barely make out the dot even at close focus on a light colored surface with them on. The blue laser protection goggles are more forgiving - the dot from the 1 watt 445nm looks like a pale orange spot much like a typical average brightness LED. I think from some things that I have read that what I am seeing there might actually be fluorescence... I need to do some tests for that. I do know that with the goggles on and the beam burning paper or wood at very close focus, the brightness suddenly dramatically increases, and there is a lot of white light being thrown off, some frequencies of which are clearly going right through the goggles. It can get hard to look at, and I'm thinking of making some neutral density film addon filters for them for that purpose.

Also, after reading some about the detrimental effects of high energy light frequencies on the retinal tissue, I'm using the goggles much more often.

- NR

I posted this over in Safety and Legal, but I'll cc it here as well.

It gets worse, he messed up BOTH eyes, and worse then that, he did not seek help but tried to hide the condition. Which means if he got the genetically enhanced drug earlier, more of his vision might have been saved. They must of gave him a experimental treatment as a last ditch hope. It seems to have worked, somewhat.

Free link to New England Journal of Medicine:

MMS: Error

I know it says error, but it will work.

Thanks to JEM at PL, who works in the opthalmic business, for the link.

Steve

I still think there's more to this than 'accidental flashes'. Seems to me like if he was waving the thing around. the damage would be on multiple points on the retina, not all concentrated in one spot. Damage to a singular spot indicates that both the laser, the beam, and both eyeballs, were being held relatively steady.