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FrozenGate by Avery

200 mw shone in eye for split second, but had eye glasses on?

Ultron said:
Another accident. This is getting ridiculous. Well at least it didn't say <1000mw.

:knight:
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Unless you are buying from a reputable seller, the power labels on those cheap 532nm pointers are pretty much useless to go off as a safety guideline. It could say: <20mW/<100mW/<1000000mW, you just don't know unless it's LPM'ed.

-Alex
 





Hap said:
Unless you are buying from a reputable seller, the power labels on those cheap 532nm pointers are pretty much useless to go off as a safety guideline. It could say: <20mW/<100mW/<1000000mW, you just don't know unless it's LPM'ed.

-Alex
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You never know! One day you might get lucky and get a 1000000mW!
 
I realize the topic name is misleading. I got totally confused and thought the laser said "200mw" but it really said "less than 200mw" but we bought it off eBay and the name of the laser did say "5mw great for cats" but I think I may have got lucky. It's been 12 hours and my eyes still feel fine and I don't see any floaters or feel dry eyed.
 
Lakalia said:
I realize the topic name is misleading. I got totally confused and thought the laser said "200mw" but it really said "less than 200mw" but we bought it off eBay and the name of the laser did say "5mw great for cats" but I think I may have got lucky. It's been 12 hours and my eyes still feel fine and I don't see any floaters or feel dry eyed.
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I'd advise going to get your eyes checked anyway - damage may not be noticeable but it could still be there and could still have the potential to get worse. Doesn't hurt to get them checked out! :D
 
I'm always sad when I hear of these accidents. I believe you most likely dodged a bullet, but it could happen again. I would not use this laser for a cat toy, and would treat it with the respect all lasers deserve.
 
Sounds like you escaped any harm but see an eye MD anyway to be on safe side as others have said.
Nobody here can or is qualified to give you a medical evaluation.
 
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Yeah, that laser is probably 50mW or so. Even those 5mW cheapo pointers will often be 10mW or more because they're sensitive to heat and voltage, and it is more expensive to add power-control hardware. Perhaps the laser hit your eye for a short period and at an angle and so it didn't directly focus on your retina, but it'd be good, as others have said, to get your eye checked out. If the laser only quickly hit your eye it may not have had time to cause damage too.

For your cat, you should get a cheapo red laser pointer. Those are almost always <5mW, use far less power (532nm lasers eat through batteries), and it doesn't seem to annoy cats as much as well as being safer for their eyes.
 
It's probably between 30 and 120mW. The safe limit is 5mW but that doesn't mean anything above that will blind you instantly, and the odds of getting permanent damage at around 50mW aren't that high if you consider the laser divergence and the amount reflected off your prescription glasses.

If those "low power" ebay lasers were that prone to doing permanent damage there would be dozens of stories about that on the news every day.

I think you'll be just fine, but he should be more careful in the future.
 
It all depends on what power the laser actually is (i'm guessing far over 5 mW but far under 200), and how long your eye was actually exposed.

The latter is quite important: if someone waves around a laser and it briefly strikes your eye, the duration of exposure can be -very- short resulting in no damange if lucky.

Then again, stop using powerful lasers to annoy pets. They will just as readily change a 1 mW laser dot which poses no danger to people.
 
Make him pay for the cat to see an opthomologist.
I seriously doubt you had any eye damage but I wouldn't say that about the cat. Bet when he was shining it around you could see the beam when it wasn't in a very bright room.
 
I have no idea if this kind of thing could actually damage the cats vision. As long as they chase the dot things will be fine, but if they look directly into the laser i guess they are as vulnerable as we are, if not more so.

On the other side, as long as you don't shine the laser directly into the eye of the cat is should be fine.
 
200mW is considered a high power laser. I think you should go to see a eye doctor.
 
The dot of a 532nm laser is MUCH brighter than any other readily available wavelength and you can't just go off beam visibility. Take a look at the relative brightness calculator. A 5mW 650nm is 8 time less bright than a 5mW 532nm dot. It's very likely that 532nm is 50mW or more. 50mW would give a dot brightness 83 times stronger than an actual cat toy. Take a 50mW 532nm and shine the dot at something and see how uncomfortable it is to look at the closer you get to it. I just read an article that says cats are 6 times more sensitive to light than we are.
 
Cats do have superior low light vision, but can also deal with full daylight sun just the way we can. I'm not sure of they would actually be more sensitive to danger from lasers because of that.

Also, permanent eye damage to retina is often a thermal issue, and this would mostly depend on the in the eye to remove the heat.

The saying might imply that curiosity kills cats, but in this case that might not be the case. As humans we are inclined to investigate where this bright source of light originates, but a cat cat couldn't probably care less.
 
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