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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?
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"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?
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.
So, you're the only voice I see calling for them to be banned, and then you turn around and call the government an idiot, for banning things?
Was that trolling or an honest knee jerk reaction?
"We need more testing in this field, particularly on that white wall over there."
...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.
Do not look directly into Laser (or Lightsaber) with remaining good eye.
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
I believe it's called satire. How can you not tell???
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.
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.
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.
Because it wasn't?
For large sets, this will be our guide even unto death, for the LORD will work for each type of data it is applied to...
Have gnu, will travel.
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.
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.
Your apprehension reminds me of this article: Russian concert laser show blinds 30
You have my vote
Democracy Now! - uncensored, anti-establishment news
"Simply" changing the level?
A LOT of things are different whenever you change levels. For instance, Class I devices do not need emission indicators. But higher powered lasers do need emission indicators. In fact, they need fail-safe emission indicators, which typically means using two LEDs and two current limiting resistors and two GPIO pins on your microcontroller. Not only that, but the color of the emission indicator must be substantially different from the emissions themselves, so that an operator wearing safety glasses can still see the indicator light up.
Plus, there's that whole product report thing that you have to send to the FDA's CDRH. I'm not entirely sure but it's probably a felony to put false statements into the Initial Product Report.
:(){
...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?
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.
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.
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.
[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'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.
No, we should regulate him (only to the point of making sure he can't regulate *us*) because he's a superstitious idiot.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
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.
Cigarettes will never be banned as they bring in too much tax revenue.
Right.
Of course, that all changes with Government Healthcare becomes mandatory in order to reduce costs
No, they die much sooner than non-smokers, and despite their lung cancers, COPD, and emphysema they cost overall less money in their welfare healthcare years than those oldsters who bitterly cling to their mortal coil at the expense of taxpayers. One might expect the government to back off on the anti-smoking message as the costs escalate.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
Anybody have a source for a good high power laser without the 'glam price' of Wicked Lasers? eBay looks to be limited to 5mW units.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
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 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.
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.