from the do-NOT-look-into-laser-with-remaining-good-eye dept.
Teen 'Blasts Away' Parts of Retina by Staring Into a Pet's Laser Pointer:
The device used was a laser pointer toy intended for exercising pets. While devices like this are often advertised as being low-power lasers, that's now[sic] always the case, and mounting evidence of retinal damage caused by such pointers suggests the risk is growing, researchers say, even though people might not be aware of it.
[...] Despite only looking at the laser directly for a matter of seconds, immediately afterwards he experienced a form of vision loss for several minutes, after describing the initial visual effect as a bright light.
Five months after the incident, the boy, experiencing ongoing blurred vision and partial vision loss in his right eye, went to see OSU ophthalmologist Frederick Davidorf.
At the time, the boy said he sometimes couldn't see individual letters when reading text with his right eye (with his left eye closed). At that point, tests revealed visual acuity was slightly diminished in his right eye, but presented as normal in his left eye.
On a subsequent visit six months later, his visual acuity was found to have improved to a normal level in both eyes, but that seemingly positive result didn't reflect the harm done inside the eye.
Using a high-resolution optical scanning system, Davidorf saw first-hand the damage done to the boy's retinas, where entire regions of light-sensitive photoreceptors cells (aka rods and cones) had been "blasted away" by the laser, as Davidorf puts it.
"There's just nothing left there," Davidorf says. "The affected areas are devoid of cones."
Journal Reference:
Vitellas, Carol BA; Doble, Nathan PhD; Wells-Gray, et al. Cone Photoreceptor Integrity assessed with Adaptive Optics Imaging after Laser-Pointer-Induced Retinal Injury Retinal Cases and Brief Reports, (DOI: 10.1097/ICB.0000000000001025)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday September 20 2020, @12:58PM
Does that mean the boy has more rods in one eye? There is a reason pirates wore eyepatches, this may come in handy when clearing DUMBs.
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Sunday September 20 2020, @01:00PM (20 children)
What part of "Light Amplified by Stimulated Emission of Radiation" says "I should point this directly into my eye" to anyone who's not a complete moron?
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by BsAtHome on Sunday September 20 2020, @01:28PM
Hm, yes. It should have been pointed at the teen's reproductive organ to be considered a Darwin Award worthy action. Now it is just normal plain and normal adolescent stupidity trying to push borders where they cannot be pushed.
(Score: 2) by Immerman on Sunday September 20 2020, @01:45PM (7 children)
Perhaps the part where the "do not look directly into laser" warning label used to be?
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday September 20 2020, @02:38PM
"with your remaining eye!"
(Score: 2) by srobert on Sunday September 20 2020, @03:54PM (5 children)
You mean the label written on the side in 0.025 size font?
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Sunday September 20 2020, @10:53PM (4 children)
It's a laser. If you need a warning label to tell you to not shine it in your eyes, the human race is better off without you.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by srobert on Monday September 21 2020, @12:23AM
And if staring at it killed you that would be a good thing. But it just you makes you blind.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 21 2020, @09:38AM (1 child)
You forget that kids are fucking stupid and they are the ones playing with it. How high place can you jump? How long can you stare into a laser pointer? How much weight can you pull with your finger before you break something? How fast can you race your buddy down the street?
How many people got eyes damaged because others are shinning lasers into their eyes?? Just check the news for latest idiot shinning a laser onto a plane. And they do that with 0.1W or even 1W lasers because "for the lols".
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Monday September 21 2020, @11:36AM
s/kids/people/g
Darwin used to take care of this shit. We are not better off bubble wrapping the entire world.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by Common Joe on Tuesday September 22 2020, @04:00AM
All teenagers do really stupid things that are life threatening. Even you and I did it when we were young and stupid. Most of us just get lucky. Luck always plays a huge factor.
There are a lot of wise people with which the human race is better off with because they learned not to be stupid through the school of hard knox.
And please don't forget that everyone is part of the lucky 10000 [xkcd.com] many times in their life.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday September 20 2020, @02:09PM (6 children)
Think about this,
Who markets the bloody things as 'toys for pets'? I agree there's a degree of idiocy involved on the part of the teen, but it could be argued that a toy designed for teasing cats (and the occasional dog) with, knowing how extra sensitive their eyes are to light, shouldn't be capable of causing this degree of damage (and if they are, what sort of long term damage are the eyes of the cats exposed to them suffering?)
As the paper is behind a paywall, and the Abstract is horribly blank and empty here, I can only assume the teen involved 'looked' at the thing 'point blank' for the 'matter of seconds' involved, with no blinking (as implied by the use of 'stared' in the headline), if that is the case, then it wouldn't matter how weak the laser was, idiots gonna idiot..
(For the record, I have retinal damage in my left eye caused by exposure to an IR laser from when an idiot bastard cunt of a research assistant decided to run an experiment between two optical benches at opposite ends of a teaching lab, the intervening 300ft mostly open-plan space being populated by computers and my workshop, I come out of the workshop right into the beam, the only saving fucking grace was the fact that he had a He-Ne laser along the same path, my blink response kicked in, and, knowing the cunts were playing around with the lasers the previous day, I kept my eyes shut, backed into the workshop and saved further damage...same cunt, not one week later than this incident, managed to accidentally divert the same beam combo out of a window and into a neighbouring housing estate, a pensioner couple were treated to a little red dot dancing about their living-room walls..Universities, what palaces of fun, eh?)
(Score: 3, Insightful) by The Mighty Buzzard on Sunday September 20 2020, @04:01PM
Nah. Laser. There's no excuse for pointing it at the eyes of anything that has them except either colossal stupidity or to intentionally inflict eye injury. Not at any power level.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday September 20 2020, @04:13PM
When I was in grad school, I walked down the hall past a laser lab where they had a high powered green pulsed laser running. With the door open. The grad student and his advisor were standing in there talking and looking at a piece of paper, without their goggles on, and the best part was noticing that the goggles hanging around their necks were green. GREEN GOGGLES ARE NOT FOR PROTECTION FROM GREEN LASERS!
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday September 20 2020, @04:22PM (1 child)
It began after someone was awarded a patent [uspto.gov] for it.
(Score: 2) by aristarchus on Sunday September 20 2020, @07:51PM
Obligatory xkcd? https://xkcd.com/729/ [xkcd.com] Pretty sure that is what happened.
(Score: 2) by darkfeline on Sunday September 20 2020, @10:41PM (1 child)
I hope you sued the research assistant and/or university.
Join the SDF Public Access UNIX System today!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 21 2020, @12:00PM
Tried, the damage was only found three years after the incident when I went for a full eye test, rather than the usual 'yes, I can read the letters on the bottom line' yearly one. It was the ophthalmologist carrying it out who, after having a good look at my left eye and dragging a colleague in to consult, asked me 'do you work with lasers?' and then described the damage.At that time I didn't normally work with lasers, but did work in an environment where they were common, and the incident described was the only one I could think of where a beam had been anywhere near my eyes (of course, they used IR lasers a lot, so the possibility of unknown exposure exists)
At the time it happened, I reported it and he got a verbal bollocking, funnily, he got a bigger bollocking for the incident with the beam diverted out the window and into the housing estate, but there was no written record of the incident(s), the lawyer consulted basically said that without that, proving where and when exposure to the beam which caused the damage had occurred would be a problem, I tried anyway, it ended up costing me a considerable sum In barely affordable legal fees such that I had to eventually instruct them to abandon the action.
This was all close on 30 years ago now, my eye test a couple of months back has shown the damaged eye is significantly worse than it was a year or so ago, putting it mildly, it's a bit of a bugger..
(Score: 5, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday September 20 2020, @02:13PM (1 child)
I'll bet that this is the reason you aren't supposed to shine laser pointers at airplanes. Someone inside might be holding a cat near a window.
(Score: 2) by acid andy on Monday September 21 2020, @01:26PM
Indeed. It makes perfect sense to discourage birds from striking the window [soylentnews.org].
If a cat has kittens, does a rat have rittens, a bat bittens and a mat mittens?
(Score: 2) by fakefuck39 on Sunday September 20 2020, @08:58PM (1 child)
All children are uneducated, but that doesn't mean they're morons. Children have not had time to learn yet. It is not unreasonable to expect a child to grab a cat toy that makes a light dot and stare at it. In fact, this adult moron has checked datacenter fiber cables this way a couple of times out of sheer laziness.
The real morons here are the parents. They might not be educated on what a specific cat toy does, but they sure as hell should spent a couple of minutes to google a toy they don't know before letting a kid play with it.
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Sunday September 20 2020, @10:56PM
Dude, it's a laser. Everyone who's ever heard the word knows it's not something you point at your eyes. It's something I would have known before I started preschool.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by canopic jug on Sunday September 20 2020, @02:06PM
Since these are marketed for pets one has to wonder about the risk they are subjected to. Cats have excellent night vision and are very sensitive to light. It is impossible to play with them for any length of time using a laser pointer and not accidentally pass across their eyes. Perhaps these things ought to be pulled from the market and low power ones sold instead.
Money is not free speech. Elections should not be auctions.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday September 20 2020, @02:07PM (2 children)
I hate the fact that lasers are appearing in more and more trivial things.
It's unnecessary exposure to something that you have no idea how powerful it is.
My father in law bought me a cheap laser level from Home Depot or such. It was hard to not accidental flash your eye when working with this thing and there was no light indicating if the laser (class III) was on or not. Totally unnecessary and I use a regular spirit level where I don't need to exercise any caution at all.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday September 20 2020, @02:42PM
Not even with the hammer and thumb?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday September 20 2020, @09:14PM
I use a handheld scanner at work all the time and I often times wonder about just how powerful it is. I hope that the lasers aren't very powerful as it's trivial to accidentally shine them in somebody's eyes. Presumably, the scanners use laser because it's cheaper than using a camera and the laser pattern makes it easier to handle situations where the UPC code is warped in one way or another.
But, I do wonder a bit about just how powerful the laser is and how much risk there is from accidentally getting it in the eye. It sounds like this case wasn't a matter of a momentary exposure, so that would cause more damage than a brief exposure would.
(Score: 5, Funny) by c0lo on Sunday September 20 2020, @04:42PM (9 children)
List of thing to never do when you grow up (if you survive until then):
1. don't eat tide pods
2. don't drink Mexican hand sanitizer or inject bleach
3. absolutely, positively, never ever look into a laser with your remaining eye.
(large grin)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday September 20 2020, @09:57PM (7 children)
Don't forget that you should never stare at the during an eclipse without appropriate protective gear.
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Sunday September 20 2020, @10:57PM
Cutting goggles work a treat. Welding mask is too dark.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Immerman on Sunday September 20 2020, @11:17PM (5 children)
You should never stare at the sun, period. There's nothing special about an eclipse, except that people are more likely to want to stare at the sun.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 21 2020, @02:05AM (2 children)
It is ok to look at a total eclipse during the period of totality. But as soon as even a point of sunlight re-appears, you have switch to protective glasses
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Monday September 21 2020, @11:40AM (1 child)
While it'd serve anyone who listened to a rando on the Internet right for damaging their eyes doing so, no it is not. It can damage your eyes even when only the corona is visible, though you can sneak by that with just dark sunglasses.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Monday September 21 2020, @03:51PM
I would argue that if the president can stare at an eclipse with his bare eyes, then it MUST be safe! Imagine all those idiots around him using eye protection they heard about on fake news.
The lower I set my standards the more accomplishments I have.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 21 2020, @04:33AM (1 child)
What are you talking about? The Great Eclipse of 2017 was one of the coolest things I've ever seen.
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Monday September 21 2020, @03:52PM
President Trump would agree! He didn't need no fake news eye protection to stare at the sun.
The lower I set my standards the more accomplishments I have.
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Monday September 21 2020, @03:49PM
Before he damaged his eye, I wonder if he had first done something that damaged his brain cells?
Did the doctors think to check for that?
The lower I set my standards the more accomplishments I have.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by bussdriver on Sunday September 20 2020, @05:19PM (8 children)
The USA has a laser strength classification to prevent such things. Laser pointers are in the safe range where you can't harm yourself unless you can stand the pain of long periods of time looking into the thing (unlikely.)
The problem is that higher power lasers blast you before you can blink or notice the damage. Poorly made laser pointers can go outside the classification; I read this long ago that QC problems have created ones that go out of range. I've had cheap lasers from china which differed in strength but I have no way to measure them to be sure so I've been careful ever since to not expose my eyes directly to the lasers; although, my main use has been for laser lines which do weaken the beam a bit.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday September 20 2020, @06:57PM
Even their listed rating is probably not accurate. Check out this video [youtu.be] for instance. Youtuber styropyro bought 5mw laser pointers that turned out to be 100's of times stronger than that.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday September 20 2020, @07:29PM (3 children)
>> Laser pointers are in the safe range where you can't harm yourself unless you can stand the pain of long periods of time looking into the thing (unlikely.)
Except if you point them at a copy in Portland, in which case you will be killed.
(Score: 2) by ChrisMaple on Monday September 21 2020, @03:26AM (2 children)
So you think blinding a policeman is a morally defensible action.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 21 2020, @08:13AM (1 child)
He was only advocating pointing them at a "copy" of one, like Customs and Boarding Patrol officers with no identification?
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Monday September 21 2020, @11:41AM
No, he means cardboard cutouts of law enforcement used for social distancing reasons. You know, like they're using in sports arenas for fans.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Sunday September 20 2020, @10:58PM (2 children)
Thinking like that leads to "not for internal use" warnings on tractors. Which means it's bloody stupid.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 21 2020, @05:55AM (1 child)
you should put that on a sticker on a tractor. really. it's a shame not a lot of people would see it, although I assume there may be tractors for rent out there...
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Monday September 21 2020, @11:45AM
I did put one on my father's. He's pretty damned smart most of the time but when it's a question of getting something done or having to wait around and figure something else out, he sometimes comes up with some really wacky ideas to just get the job done.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday September 20 2020, @05:28PM (12 children)
There's no way his vision could have recovered after the incident. I got my eyes blasted by malicious females with a powerful laser pointer to the point I see mostly black, blurry blobs known as floaters. The condition continues to worsen, and eventually I'll be blind. Eye damage caused by laser exposure is irreparable.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday September 20 2020, @06:28PM (7 children)
What's so special about lasers versus regular light? Nobody can explain that.
(Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday September 20 2020, @07:00PM
lmgtfy [lmgtfy.app]
(Score: 0, Disagree) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday September 20 2020, @10:13PM (5 children)
Intensity, lasers are highly focused light and depending upon the wavelength it can be rather high energy as well. It's probably more helpful to think about what happens when you take a magnifying glass to light, it'll focus it down enough that you can start fires.
If nobody can explain it to you, then perhaps you need to move to a part of the world where siblings don't marry.
(Score: 4, Informative) by Immerman on Sunday September 20 2020, @11:34PM (4 children)
The focus is only a small part of the issue - looking at a beam of normal light with the same power and focus would do far less, if any damage.
The rest of the difference is that laser light is monochromatic and coherent - which is to say the all the photons have the same wavelength, and the waves are all aligned with each other. Which (very crudely) means that when you shine it at something the maximum-power peaks of all the photons hit at the exact same time in high-power pulses, rather than being smeared through time into a continuous low-power stream of light.
An analogy would be the difference between standing in front of a gatling gun, versus a high-power water hose. If both bullets and water hit at the same speed, over the same area, with the same amount of mass per second, then they will both be delivering the same average power - but the bullets will do far more damage because they deliver that power in short, extremely high-power bursts with each bullet impact.
(Score: 1, Troll) by ChrisMaple on Monday September 21 2020, @03:38AM (1 child)
Water from a hose or even a hydrant will rarely be able to rise 100 feet if aimed straight up. Bullets often exceed the speed of sound and might rise more than a mile aimed straight up. Bullets, typically lead, are much more dense than water. There are too many complications to make the comparison informative.
Note, however, that high power, tiny water jets are used industrially as cutters.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 21 2020, @04:56AM
Said jets get a lot of their cutting force from sand in the stream. You can still do quite a bit of damage with water only at those pressures, however.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 21 2020, @05:28AM (1 child)
Naively, I would think, all else being equal, that the difference in power density between a coherent and incoherent source would be the square root of two, looking at it like a time integral of random waves vs. coherent waves and getting something like the difference between the peak and RMS signal.
What coherence does buy you in a light source is the ability to put almost all of its energy into a tight beam over very long distances, so you can very effectively deliver that power into an eyeball (where, conveniently the beam diameter is typically smaller than the pupil opening).
(Score: 2) by Immerman on Monday September 21 2020, @01:59PM
Keep in mind that when interacting with matter, light behaves as a particle rather than a wave and gets entirely absorbed instantly at the moment of contact. With a laser, you're getting hit by a wall of photons simultaneously, then nothing until the next wall hits.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday September 20 2020, @06:58PM (1 child)
The eyes saccade (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saccade) which allows different areas of the retina to be exposed to the same areas in the visual field, and the brain combines this all into the image we see.
The eye's optic nerve attaches on the image sensing side of the retina causing a large blind spot in all of us. These saccades and the brain subconsciously merging the image fragments together is why we do not have a giant blind spot that we have to move our heads around to be able to see into.
It is funny that creationists point to the human eye as an example supporting "intelligent design". The human eye is a great counter-example to their beliefs-- only an incompetent and stupid engineer would design a digital camera where the wires were attached to the image sensor on the side facing the lens, occluding a large portion of the image to be captured.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday September 20 2020, @09:09PM
Is that why we need a mirror to see up our own asshole?
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday September 20 2020, @07:54PM
Found the rapist!
(Score: 0, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday September 20 2020, @07:59PM
Translation: You attacked them, and they stood their ground and avoided being maimed or killed. Now you howl as if you were the victim. The ironic thing is that I bet you can rant endlessly in favor of "Stand your ground" laws, and you have no conception of what a hypocrite you are.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 21 2020, @06:10AM (1 child)
The teen was in Ohio. As a native Ohioan, I can assure you that it is indeed possible, in Ohio, to be that damn bored.
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Monday September 21 2020, @03:53PM
It may be possible for people in Ohio to be that bored, but it is possible for them to be that stupid? I haven't heard either way from anyone knowledgeable about such things.
The lower I set my standards the more accomplishments I have.