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Gov't Report: Laser Pointers Produce Too Much Energy, Pose Risk For the Careless
coondoggie writes "Commercial grade green and red laser pointers emit energy far beyond what is safe, posing skin, eye and fire hazards. That was the conclusion of a National Institute of Standards and Technology study on the properties of handheld lasers. The study tested 122 of the devices and found that nearly 90% of green pointers and about 44% of red pointers tested were out of federal safety regulation compliance."
are we supposed to fight the sharks?
You have to login to read the article. No thanks.
"The study tested 122 of the devices and found that nearly 90% of green pointers and about 44% of red pointers tested were out of federal safety regulation compliance."
So blue lasers are safe then?
Why not, everything else is being banned.
Idiot federal government. We need to ban THEM.
In other news, a report reports that automobiles produce too much energy and poses risks, including death, for the careless.
No sig. Move along - nothing to see here.
TFA, which has the same headline, ends by mentioning that people point them at pilots in planes taking off or landing. So way to make a misleading headline, networkworld. Not getting the traffic you want?
Obligatory xkcd http://what-if.xkcd.com/13/
Sometimes it's better not having signature
Hey they help cull the stupid.
"We need more testing in this field, particularly on that white wall over there."
Holey Cats, Batman!
...buy lots of laser pointers.
This makes me soooo want to buy laser pointers I don't need, just because I may soon not be able to.
How unsafe would a cluster of these be...
now I just need some hydrogen balloons.
Title says it all. Meet the ban hammer!
Life is not for the lazy.
Do not look directly into Laser (or Lightsaber) with remaining good eye.
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
The green laser pointers, aimed at the ground, are great for getting rid of unwanted birds.
In a similar report, we've found that 100% of lighters, knives, crampons and Official Red Ryder Carbine-Action Two-Hundred-Shot Range Model Air Rifles are outside tolerable limits for safety.
Seriously, you'll shoot your eye out, kid.
This signature is false.
More power!
His what-if series is most amusing...
Back in the day men use to resolve these problems on their own. Why the fuck is this even neccissary, and at the very worst "harm caused by laser" in court is perfectly well covered by a gazillion pre-existing assault laws. Should be, "assault with any fucking bloody object". Make it a fucking law and stop tacking bullshit on or putting your grubby little regulatory hands into the marketplaces of this country over stupid shit.
They are only 'illegal' if the federally mandated label states that they are of one class of power output and the device exceeds that stated output level. Simply changing the label to indicate that the device is a Class 4 instead of Class 3R or Class 3B device brings them into compliance. However, there are still local ordinances that require operators of lasers to be licensed and the installation to comply with said ordinances. The FAA also has certain notification requirements for use of lasers in an outdoor aerial display venue.
now it will be illegal to strap one onto my AK47
I got to the chocolate box before you, that's why the hard ones have teeth marks.
Have gnu, will travel.
They only regulate who drives one ON PUBLIC ROADS. Details, details.
No. Fuck this shit. I move that every citizen of the USA shall receive from the government one glock 9 mm pistol, one box of hollow point ammunition, one multi-watt laser pointer, one... no, make that TWO extremely fucking dangerous magnets, and a big fucking bucket of fireworks, to do with as they please. In one year, the survivors can get together and discuss additional regulation. :-/
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
The government regulators have no desire to prevent you from buying or selling higher power lasers. They do care when you lie to your customers and tell them the lasers are less dangerous than they actually are. They care when you use shoddy manufacturing that allows harmful IR to escape the casing, while again telling the customer that they are completely shielded against this. If these lasers worked as advertized, then there wouldn't be a problem. Alternately if they were sold as class 3B devices (which is what they effectively are) there would be no problem, as the purchasers would know the risks and could plan accordingly. But they weren't and the manufacturers/importers should be held responsible for their recklessness.
The careless should perish and die. Stop protecting the stupid ones, you're making all of us weaker in the process.
I Wanna Work There!!
I shouldn't keep pointing my 1W Wicked Laser at passing airliners? Where's the fun in that?
The sun emits energy far beyond what is safe, posing skin, eye and fire hazards.
They only regulate who drives one ON PUBLIC ROADS. Details, details.
So we require all laser pointer enthusiasts to have dome enclosures over their property as the solution to all this? I guess it could work, but I'm betting you'll have a hard time getting buy-in.
I thought NIST was supported by public funds.
The public should be able to read the report without qualification.
Why do we need to sign-up for an account with IOPScience?
Why do we need to agree to their daft set of rules?
Maybe we should put IOPScience on the chopping block!!
Your apprehension reminds me of this article: Russian concert laser show blinds 30
You have my vote
Democracy Now! - uncensored, anti-establishment news
Chuck Norris's fist produces enough energy to pose a risk to the careless. Perhaps we should regulate him.
...and how terribly bad they were over the safety limits?
Also, can you publish the retailers carrying them and prices, so I can surely avoid getting them? /Heading back to the Flashlight Forums to discuss my new hexa-Cree 6000 lumen pen light.
So, you only receive a brief flash from the laser, and only have a few rods and cones ablated by the coherent pulse from the laser. That one-second blast has only damaged 0.01% of your vision. Ten years down the line, when half your vision is gone, why would you associate the loss with a laser?
And my axe!
Well, thank you so very much for that link. I'd never before heard of "what-if.xkcd.com" and I am pleased to become a fan. I like the thinking and calculation* that went into that article. (* I am a fan of arithmetic and of calculating whatever I can whenever I can, as any review of my posts would show you. Recent example: Amazing! 4513 bytes per neuron per data-entry showing that the average data-cube per neuron is a cube of 16 pixels on the side for monochromatic laser, or a cube of 11 pixels edge-length if three different color lasers are used for data acquisition)
We require anyone owning a laser pointer to refrain from pointing it at anyone without that person's consent, upon pain of fine or imprisonment. That includes pointing it at the sky unless you have specifically confirmed the area clear of air traffic.
Your right to shine a bright light ends at my eyeballs. (Or at my property, for lasers strong enough to damage objects.)
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | my blog
You cannot wash away blood with blood
That's kind of the point I'm trying to make.. For anything beyond a very low power beam, we should require licensing for these plane-dropping laser pointers. But hey, if we can't get people to agree to regulate guns, good luck getting them to regulate laser pointers.
The fact that many agencies are now using drones to spy on everyday Americans might have something to do with this research. It's only a matter of time before people become resentful towards the eyes in the skies.
Now here is one more thing I have to buy before it's banned for "public safety" reasons.
They come in the dark, only in the darkest.
So why did the same govt. stamp them as in compliance then?
And since when can any light emitter using button-cell/AAA batteries have enough power to do "any" measurable damage?
What are these people doing? throwing them at others/ stabbing the whole thing in their eye sockets, or are they the really dumb ones and swallowed the damn thing?
Now if these are those wickedlasers.com.hk ones then there might be something, other than that sounds like a bunch of whiny nanny-state pussies to me.
Wake me up when there's a real problem.
It doesn't work that way.
Lasers damage your retina via heating. If the retina isn't damaged by the light exposure it isn't going to spontaneously burn up years later.
I hope they ban them.
Pointing them at planes, pointing them at movie theater screens, pointing them at moving cars. Lasers have no purpose or use to people in a mass production kind of way. They are more of an annoyance to most people than a benefit.
Ordinary people would have expected laser pointers to have been banned by now- but this is based on a misunderstanding. Societies have to allow very many potentially dangerous things- cars, bleach, nitrate fertilizers to mention three, to exist and be available to ordinary people. Semiconductor lasers mostly exist under the same logic, BUT with one important difference.
To be criminally anti-social with a laser is trivially and largely undetectable. Because the potential harm that is done effects the eyes alone, we have no 'weapons protocols' in place that naturally limit the likelihood that some idiot will casually misuse the laser in this way. Compare this to someone considering misusing a catapult, BB-gun, blow-pipe, or crossbow. The laser 'weapon' is silent, usually small, and difficult for people to trace back to the user.
Of course, the laser pointer is largely given a free-ride because actual examples of malicious eye-damage are very rare. Dazzling a person is more of an issue than permanently affecting their sight.
What has happened, therefore, is that misuse of a laser pointer has been addressed instead by governments. The law allows for a person who 'annoys' the state by laser to be punished severely, encouraged by laughable propaganda campaigns in the press. In this sense lasers are treated like computer hacking. Hack the wrong company or the wrong politician, even in a way barely criminal way, and they'll lock you up for years. Wave your laser near the wrong person or facility, and you'll suffer the same fate.
As for overpowered pointers, well the laser element will always be capable of 'illegal' output, and will be limited by the circuit. Presumably, cheap lasers are assumed to rapidly dim across time, so when new, the circuit is designed to crank the output up, assuming the average lifetime output will meet the desired limit.
From XKCD What-If #13:
Dangerously powerful lasers are the next step in the evolution of... LASER CATS!
This is a hacked account, for which the owner can not be held responsible.
YES!
Stimulate the economy through government funded personal destruction!
That sounds like the best use of the government I've heard of in at least 30 years :)
Add one fucking Ford Mustang GT when you turn 13, one case of Busch Light, and vials of smallpox, and I'm so fucking in on this plan.
Is this where we use the whatcouldpossiblygowrong tag?
This is a hacked account, for which the owner can not be held responsible.
The government isn't coming for your laser pointers. The real issue here is trust. How much do you trust the manufacturer of the laser pointer to have actually tested their product and labelled the output correctly? How much do you trust the retailer you bought that laser pointer from to stand behind their product? This study simply shows that a significant fraction of the laser pointers out there are mislabelled, and that's a real problem. No matter what you think the risks are, how can you make an informed decision if you can't trust the power output on the label to be what it actually is?
The paper identifies a need for an independent testing organization to certify the labels on laser pointers. It doesn't have to be the government doing this; a not-for-profit commercial entity such as Underwriters Laboratories would be just as effective as long as the public is aware of the problem. When you buy an appliance, you trust that it won't burn down your house when properly operated. In the same vein, you trust that when you buy a low-power laser pointer, it won't blind you or your cat when properly operated.
[points laser pointer at government report, which turns brown, then goes up in flames]
No... no, I think that's about right.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
You need to form the NLA (National Laser Association).
Enforce your right to bear lasers!
You're wrong. Also very presumptuous. There are many things a high powered sports car can do safely and legally that your average mommy sedan or SUV cannot. The vehicles can reduce all kinds of risk (passing with much larger safety margins, better [safer] stopping, better [safer] cornering), as it turns out, both the horsepower and the sporty handling can come in quite handy.
That's exactly how I drove mine for the last few decades. No speeding tickets because -- ready -- no speeding. No patching out, no taking corners faster than posted (although I was *definitely* taking the corners significantly more safely than non sports vehicles were.) The only downside, really, was that to get the most out of the thing, I had to use soft compound tires, and they just don't last as long, and they cost a lot, and they scrub off like a rat bastard when you have to make a sudden stop (deer, other road hazards.) I have some truly hair-raising stories about putting flat spots on my tires -- but were it a lesser vehicle, the stories would have been about front-end impacts.
All this, in a car that got decent milage (twin turbos ftw) and easily exceeded your 350 HP line in the sand. If I had *wanted* to speed and otherwise misbehave, it was right there at my fingertips. I leave it as an exercise for you to imagine why I never did.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
Let the marketplace sort it out. Those who buy juiced pointers will blind themselves such that they can no longer shop for juiced pointers and the problem self-fixes.
Table-ized A.I.
So... you don't understand optics, electricity, or biology. Some problems with math, too. Physics, as the Pythons would have it, is "right out."
Just relax, son, others have got this for you.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
My cat suggests I smack you in the head. So would any astronomy student worth a darn. You might argue that astronomy is not "mass", and I would sadly agree that most people are broken in such a way that they are bereft of any such interest, however, you just can't argue with my cat, who has clearly thought this out further than you have. From one end of the building to the other, to be precise.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
Religion. You should have mentioned religion.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
... 1 watt blue laser isn't a hazard. And the 2 watt UV one is even less so.
now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
I wasted a temp.
Do not look into laser regulation with remaining eye.
Check out all the 5MW laser pointers on Ebay. How they get so much power from AAA batteries is amazing!
If they are so unsafe then they must have posted statistics about the number of reported laser related injuries/accidents. If not they can shaddap!
"It's because they're stupid, that's why. That's why everybody does everything." -Homer Simpson
I think we should relax the regulations, not ban the devices.
In fact, I think the devices are too weak and need to be increased in power output.
This argument smells. Having this brought up at this moment with all the talk about gun control gives credence to the idea that laser pointers can be used as weapons against forces deployed by tyrannical governments. The idea that the right to self-defense is not an absolute one should also be a trigger for Godwin's Law.
The current designs of DVD and BluRay burners no longer allow the removal of the write lasers as before. Tell me that consumer products are not being designed and re-designed the preclude their use as weapons.
I can say that toning them down may not be a bad idea.
I was managing a Radio Shack at the time. I was helping customers near the counter, another associate was helping someone over with the 'gadgets', and the next thing I remember I'm picking myself up off the floor. Thankfully, I don't think my eyes suffered permanent damage, but my eyesight is so bad already I don't know if I could tell anyway :(
I'm sure it was nothing malicious or intentional, just one of those freak things that happen, but I sure wouldn't wish it happening to someone else. So long as they can still do their job as pointers, which is to make a dot on a presentation board or wall in a relatively bright room, toning them down a bit doesn't bother me.
No one asked their opinion. Why does the government need to stick its nose into every industry? Do we *want* an intrusive government that nannies us like infants?
We're adults and we want our shit.
It is a very, very large jump from "Your right to shine a bright light ends at my eyeballs" to "Those who own a laser of power greater than X mw without a permission slip from the government should be locked in a cage" -- which is what "licensing" amounts to. Prior restraint is almost always government overreach.
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | my blog
You cannot wash away blood with blood
It is a very, very large jump from "Your right to shine a bright light ends at my eyeballs" to "Those who own a laser of power greater than X mw without a permission slip from the government should be locked in a cage" -- which is what "licensing" amounts to. Prior restraint is almost always government overreach.
Except that catching someone who does this is nearly impossible, especially in the case of the high-powered green lasers that have been used to blind airline pilots while flying hundreds of people thousands of feet above the ground. So you have to determine which right is more important: the right to not be blinded by some asshole trying to kill you and a few hundred of your closest friends, or the right of any asshole to have unfettered access to any sort of dangerous equipment they want.