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."

Comments

Re:So then...

[aurispector]

It's why we can't have nice things. Idiots point lasers at aircraft blinding the pilots and the .gov bans them. Nobody has any common sense.

Oh, we can do something about THAT?

[Greyfox]

One retarded kid swallows a magnet, and they can ban buckyballs. A pilot or something might get blinded at some point in the future and we can ban laser pointer sales. 30,000 people a year die from gun violence and we can't even pass universal fucking background checks?

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. :-/

It's not a ban.

[pavon]

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.

Re:How else...

[nugatory78]

it seems the govt. figures we are all fucking idiots that can't be trusted with our own judgment to use anything more dangerous than a butter knife, or maybe those rounded edge scissors we all got in first grade

I think thats pretty accurate for how a very large number of people in the country should be treated. I definitely don't want a lot of people I know with a commercial laser, as I do like my eyesight. I have a 500 lumen flashlight (its really really bright in a tightly focused beam) and the number of people I told "don't point it at your face because its incredibly bright", that did exactly that is astounding. When I asked why? their response was its only a flashlight... I've seen several people do that with lasers too. Not to mention that is the governments targeted mentality with their current form of "education".