It is pointed out that the basis for the development of product safety standard should be to help the manufacturer to comply with product safety legislation. Standards are usually only voluntary and should be written to be ‘good enough’, when the manufacturer chooses to use them, to help the manufacturer comply with the law and to correspondingly reduce his risk for compensation and forced removal of the product from the market.
Engineering requirements specified in IEC 60825-1 should be orientated on the level of safety that is expected from consumer products and not from industrial materials processing installations, where a certain level of awareness of hazards presented by a machine can be assumed. It is argued that currently, as the classification does not consider radiation accessible to the user during maintenance, we have the unsatisfactory situation where a Class 1 laser product might not comply with general product safety legislation in Europe and most likely also elsewhere.
General principles of tests for classification and the understanding of the classes are discussed which should help to consistently apply the standard to a variety of products as well as to help the manufacturer to reduce the risk for compensation and for withdrawal of the product from the market.