Details

Autor(en) / Beteiligte

• Lee, M. H.
• Fox, K.
• Goldwasser, S.
• Lau, D. W. M.
• Aliahmad, B.
• Sarossy, M.

Titel

Green lasers are beyond power limits mandated by safety standards

Ist Teil von

• 2016 38th Annual International Conference of the IEEE Engineering in Medicine and Biology Society (EMBC), 2016, Vol.2016, p.5144-5147

Ort / Verlag

United States: IEEE

Erscheinungsjahr

2016

Quelle

IEEE/IET Electronic Library

Beschreibungen/Notizen

• There has been an increasing number of reports of people losing vision from laser exposure from pocket laser pointers despite the safety limit of 1 milliwatt (1mW) imposed by the Australian government. We hypothesize that this is because commercially available red and green laser pointers are exceeding their labeled power outputs. We tested the power outputs of 4 red and 4 green lasers which were purchased for less than AUD30 each. The average of 10 measurements was recorded for each laser. We found that 3 out of 4 red lasers conformed to the 1mW safety standard; in contrast, all of the green lasers exceeded this limit, with one of the lasers recording an output of 127.9 mW. This contrast in compliance is explained by the construction of these lasers - green lasers are typically Diode Pumped Solid State (DPSS) lasers that can emit excessive infrared (IR) radiation with poor workmanship or inconsistent adherence to practices of safe design and quality control; red lasers are diode lasers which have limited power outputs due to `Catastrophic Optical Damage' (COD). Relevant professional bodies ought to advocate more strongly for stringent testing, quality control and licensing of DPSS lasers with a view towards government intervention to banning green laser pointer use.