The draft updates to American and international laser exposure guidelines recommend that the Maximum Permissible Exposure level (MPE) be reduced in the nanosecond to microsecond exposure duration range. We report on our measurement of the ED50 for laser-induced retinal injury for exposures to 12.5 ns and 105 ns pulses at the wavelength 532 nm. These new data, coupled with recently reported ED50 measurements for 3.5 ns and 5 ns exposures, indicate a slow monotonic increase of the ED50 in the 1 ns to 100 ns exposure durations range, and support current recommendations to lower the exposure limits.
REFERENCES
1.
American National Standards Institute (ANSI)
. (2007
) American National Standard for Safe Use of Lasers
, Laser Institute of America
.2.
International Commission on Non-Ionizing Radiation Protection (ICNIRP)
. (2000
) Revision of guidelines on limits of exposure to laser radiation of wavelengths between 400 nm and 1.4 μm
, Health Phys
79
; 431
–440
.3.
International Electrotechnical Commision (IEC)
. (2007
) IEC 60825-1 Safety of laser products, part 1: Equipment classification, requirements and user’s guide
, Ed. 2.0., Geneva, IEC
.4.
Zuclich
, J.A.
, Edsall
, P.R.
, Lund
, D.J.
, Stuck
, B.E.
, Till
, S.
, Hollins
, R.C.
, Kennedy
, P.K.
and McLin
, L.N.
(2008
) New data on the variation of laser induced retinal-damage threshold with retinal image size
. J Laser Appl
20
(2
); 83
–88
.5.
Lund
, B.J.
, Lund
, D.J.
and Edsall
, P.R.
(2008
) Laser-induced retinal damage threshold measurements with wavefront correction
, J Biomed Opt
. 13
(6
); 064011.6.
Lund
, B.J.
(2006
) The ProbitFit Program to Analyse Data from Laser Damage Threshold Studies, Walter Reed Army Institute of Research Report No. 06/001
.
This content is only available via PDF.
© 2011 Laser Institute of America.
2011
Laser Institute of America
You do not currently have access to this content.