Beware of Green Laser Pointer

This is rather disconcerting.

A team at NIST has discovered a potential safety hazard with the increasingly-popular common green laser pointer.

Late last year, the research team purchased three low-cost green laser pointers advertised to have a power output of 10 milliwatts (mW). Measurements showed that one unit emitted dim green light but delivered infrared levels of nearly 20 mW—powerful enough to cause retinal damage to an individual before he or she is aware of the invisible light. NIST’s Jemellie Galang and her colleagues repeated the tests with several other laser pointers and found similarly intense infrared emissions in some but not all units.

The problem stems from inadequate procedures in manufacturing quality assurance, according to the research team. Inside a green laser pointer, infrared light from a semiconductor diode laser pumps infrared light at a wavelength of 808 nm into a transparent crystal of yttrium orthovanadate doped with neodymium atoms (Nd:YVO4), causing the crystal to lase even deeper in the infrared, at 1064 nm. This light passes through a crystal of potassium titanyl phosphate (KTP), which emits light of half the wavelength: 532 nm, the familiar color of the green laser pointer.

However, if the KTP crystal is misaligned, little of the 1064 nm light is converted into green light, and most of it comes out as infrared. Excess infrared leakage can also occur if the coatings at both ends of the crystal that act as mirrors for the infrared laser light are too thin.

You may read the full report at the link given in that press release.

This is a serious problem because your eye can't react to shield itself from IR until it is too late. For many people who do laser alignment, working with IR laser is one of the most dangerous endeavor, even with proper eye wear.

So if you have one of these green laser pointer, try testing it as described in the report to see if you have a dangerous level of IR from it.

Zz.