Hit eye with 200mW red - specular reflection?

I was pointing out something with my laser, and it hit a silver candle holder, it reflected all across the room and hit my eye.
I blinked and saw a black dot for about 1 minute.
My vision seems normal now.

Should I be worried?

If it seems fine immediately after then you may just have gotten lucky (and learned a very harsh lesson on safety) and not gotten any permanent damage. It would be advised that you still go to an eye doctor as soon as possible just to have it looked at. Your brain can easily hide damage and make you think it isn't there but a doctor will be able to see that for sure and give you steroid and supplements that will be able to heal it somewhat if caught early.

Try covering up the other eye and looking at a sheet of text and see if there is any part of your field of vision where the text doesn't seem visible. This will at least make a problem more apparent to you at first glance, but still you should absolutely get it examined to be safe. Your eyes are permanent and so is any damage you did to it, 200mW is serious business.

Everything seems 'normal' right now, I have no problems at all reading text, and nothing seems 'blurred'.

:bumpit:

Even after 24 hours no damage shows up and my vision seems normal.
One of my eyes is a bit blurry, but I highely doubt that would be damage caused by the laser.

I decided not to go to get my eyes checked staight away, but wait for my next appointment.

I think I have gotten very lucky, and I've learned my valuable lesson, I'll never turn ANY >5mW laser on without proper safety goggles, not even for a second.

Valid said:

I was pointing out something with my laser, and it hit a silver candle holder, it reflected all across the room and hit my eye.
I blinked and saw a black dot for about 1 minute.
My vision seems normal now.

Should I be worried?

Click to expand...

My question is............

Why were you operating a dangerous High Powered Laser
indoors without appropriate Laser Safety Goggles...:thinking:

Jerry

The specular reflection was probably off of a convex surface, and as such being spread even more than the laser's normal divergence.

And if you had to pick a color, red is probably the best, still bright enough to trigger your blink and pupil contraction reflexes, but the lowest photon energy to do the least chemical damage to your retina. Blue or violet can be much more damaging, or IR, you can't see it, so it can be cooking you and you don't even know it.

I would still get checked, but in the meantime, I'd look at things like a grid, or pattern of dots or squares to look for blind spots, and also look at alternating white or black screens or sheets of paper, to see if you can find any spots that way.

(remember where your normal blind spot is so you don't freak yourself out BTW..)

If it's 200mW, your blink reflex can't react fast enough to prevent eye damage. You better hope that convex surface spread the beam out enough to reduce its power enough, but I wouldn't risk it, and would go see an eye doctor ASAP.

Is there anything that a doctor can do other than just confirming that you have screwed up your eye?

They can provide some emergency meds that can help your eye recover and prevent permanent damage or further degeneration. For example, they may prescribe you lutein. Yes, damage has been done, but if you can prevent further degeneration or scarring, you may save what is left.

Your body is quite remarkable in the way it adapts to injury. However, that may be a bad thing as well, because if you're injured, and your body just "gets used to it" it may not facilitate recovery to its previous state. That's why it's important to seek treatment immediately before your body starts to adapt to its new condition. What you may see as the problem going away may just be transition of injury to irreparable scarring.

You can test your vision with this:



Test one eye at a time by looking at the dot in the center.

If it was a round-ish shaped candle holder at some distance, you're probably fine. You could even put on some goggles and recreate the circumstances, but look at the wall behind you this time, you can see how big the exposed area is.

The power density isn't that great if the reflection is spread out over a larger area, like your entire face. With a more or less even spread, the 200 mW would be harmless in that scenario, althouh its still not recommended to try.

This just goes to show how important it is to ALWAYS wear goggles. Just think of the hours of worry you have spent, not to mention the cost of the medical visit, even if you (hopefully) turn out to be OK.

Bumpbumpbump.

Saw an eye doctor a few days ago, no retinal damage is visible, I do have an afterimage though, it'll go away but it might take a few weeks.

At least, that was what I were told.

I've learned my lesson I guess.

Glad it wasn't permanent.
*Just my opinion, take from it what you like:
Some people on LPF say "always wear your goggles" but for beam viewing it is just silly. Seems like some people on here would wear their goggles even if the laser had no lens in front of it and they were just viewing the raw light being emitted. AJ_Dual is right, the danger in lasers is the majority of the light emitted is contained within a small area. If the laser is defocused and the light covers the same area as a flashlight for example, you might get a bit of flash blinding (like you would with a >1W flashlight) but is it really going to do permanent damage?
Doubt it.
We can handle looking toward the sun and getting the same flash blinding, if the energy density of the laser (defocused) is lower than that, shouldn't have a problem.
It would be interesting to know the "safe" distances of:
1.5W of 445nm
700mW of 405nm
200mW of 660nm
20mW of 532nm etc.
The popular wavelengths at an average divergence at the popular output powers. It would give people more of an idea of what is "dangerous" instead of spamming "always wear safety goggles"
*Just my $0.02, glad you weren't hurt by your laser!

X FLY said:

You can test your vision with this:

Test one eye at a time by looking at the dot in the center.

Click to expand...

you didn't explain how the test is supposed to work..lol..
I am curious.

If you can see a dot in the middle, you have laser related damage :na: