Somebody lased me at work the other day with a 30 mw DX unit they were fooling around with. I saw a green spot moving up my shirt and told them to cut it out and had a discussion about safety with them. They were not idiots, but rather, it's a bad situation in which these dangerous devices are being marketed like toys. I don't have any problem with the idea of regulating them at the level that, say, model rocketry stuff is regulated, to make sure their users take them seriously. It would probably prevent some eye damage and maybe even aircraft crashes.
Agreed. It used to be that things like >5mW green lasers were unrestricted, but prohibitively expensive. Now that it's possible to get a 100mW laser for $40 delivered from DX, there's a lot more "casual" owners who probably aren't familiar with lasers and laser safety, like someone who might be willing to drop $300+ would be.
I think that a surge in popularity of 405nm violet could be even worse as far as safety goes. For example, I know of a few people who were shining a green laser sideways into their cornea, in order to check out the scattering and speckle within the eye, and assuming it was safe because the retina wasn't being directly hit. Do that with near UV and the "light show" effect will probably look even cooler, as it will actually cause the cornea itself to fluoresce (similar to X-Raying your own head...). Unfortunately it will probably also lead to cataracts, too, as the cornea itself can be damaged from that kind of intensity shortwave light.
There will probably also be a false sense of security with those pointers as due to the low sensitivity of the eye to violet, they look very dim relative to the amount of power they have (and at a wavelength that is more damaging per unit power than red or green).
lol.
