Article Abstracts | March 2007
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Eye Safety in the Laser Lab
Tips on staying safe when using an IR viewer.
by Ken Barat, Laser Safety Officer, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory
If one played a word-association game with the term “laser safety,” the most common responses probably would be eyewear, goggles and, perhaps, eye injury. But as with so much in life, there is more to laser safety than immediately meets the eye. An important but often overlooked component of almost any laser-safety program is the infrared viewer.
Commonly called an IR viewer, this laboratory device makes a range of invisible wavelengths visible to the user. The typical wavelength range of most commercial IR viewers is 700 to 1500 nm, with some going out to 2000 nm. With the aid of an IR viewer, lab personnel can locate beams and find stray reflections...
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