Influence of magnifiers on ocular exposure levels

From the beginning of laser safety standards it was taken into account that the ocular hazard may be increased when optical aided viewing is assumed. Especially, for highly divergent beams this kind of hazard was recognized when analyzing the potential hazard for inspecting optical fiber tips. Up to now different methods and measurement conditions were published in the IEC standard to cover all products that emit divergent laser beams. Each new version of the standard increased the effort on the measurement setup, which finally leads to the ongoing discussion about the current Condition 2 (loupe condition) in IEC 60825-1 (2007). On the basis of numerous measurements of different divergent sources this paper shows that Condition 2 is only relevant for small sources and could be simplified or even eliminated from part 1 of the standard series IEC 60825.