Overly strong lasers and eye damage
About two weeks ago,
I posted about how hand-held lasers are now strong enough to be quite dangerous to someone's eyesight.
Now, the New England Journal of Medicine has
exactly such a case:
Retinal Injuries from a Handheld Laser Pointer
Handheld laser pointers are commonly used in lecture halls and are considered to be harmless and safe. However, laser pointers can cause severe eye injury, as demonstrated by the case of a 15-year-old boy. The boy had ordered a handheld laser pointer with green light on the Internet to use as a toy for popping balloons from a distance and burning holes into paper cards and his sister's sneakers. The boy's life changed when he was playing with his laser pointer in front of a mirror to create a �laser show,� during which the laser beam hit his eyes several times. He noticed immediate blurred vision in both of his eyes. Hoping that the visual loss would be transient and afraid of telling his parents, he waited 2 weeks before seeking an ophthalmic assessment, when he could no longer disguise his bad vision. His visual acuity was so poor in his left eye that he was only able to count fingers at a distance of 3 ft, and it was 20/50 in his right eye. A funduscopic examination revealed a dense subretinal hemorrhage in his left macula and several tiny round scars in the pigment epithelium of the foveolar region of his right eye. The clinical findings were consistent with severe bilateral retinal laser injury. After 4 months, the boy's visual function remained impaired but improved to 20/32 in the right eye spontaneously and to 20/25 with a remaining scar just beside the center of the fovea in the left eye after one intravitreal injection of ranibizumab.
Like I said in my earlier post:
In a secured laboratory situation, I would feel perfectly comfortable working with this but in its role as a geek toy, the chance for accident is too high for me to feel comfortable owning it.
Dang�
Posted by DaveH at September 9, 2010 8:43 PM