retina damage from infrared laser :(

Hello

three days ago, at my work, i had to install a free space optic
transceiver for some customer , its an infrared laser, around
830-860nm at 16mW power, class 1m, its used to connect two computer
networks between buildings. Both tranceivers have a telescopes
built in what are used to align both heads to point at each other.
Anyway, i was looking through that telescope while both tranceivers
where on, so laser beam was entering my eye through a telescope, and
an eye contacts , what i was wearing at that time. I was only looking
through my right eye tho.

Anwyay, the result is that now i feel a pain at the back of my right
eye, like a needle picking inside my eye, and my vision is worse
then the left eye. Also, that dark dot (pupil?) is bigger then in
the left eye. I thought that maybe it would go away after a little
while but it hasn't, now its third day, and the pain doesn't stop at
all actually its not constant pain , sometimes smaller sometimes
more noticible that i can't fall asleep.

so i looked it up on wikipedia what does it say about class 1m:

"A Class 1M laser is safe for all conditions of use except when passed
through magnifying optics such as microscopes and telescopes. "

and i was looking through a telescope and an eye contact lens from
further reading i learned that such infrared laser can burn retina in
the eye ball, and cause the sight to be blurry. What do you
think , is my right eye permanently damaged? can retina
regenerate? is there any chance that my eye will heal after some
time? :-(

regards
Tom

(E-Mail Removed) wrote in news:c1f6df68-3140-431d-941d-19bb3ec1b640
@s13g2000prd.googlegroups.com:

> What do you
> think , is my right eye permanently damaged? can retina
> regenerate? is there any chance that my eye will heal after some
> time? :-(
>

Retina cannot regenerate. I'd suggest seeing an ophthalmologist, and fill
out any accident reports applicable at your place of employ.



--
Scott
Reverse name to reply

Thanks for your responses. Yesterday I went to an emergency doctor ,
she poured some drops in my eyes and examined them with a flashlight.
She said that my right eye is injured and i should let it heal, and
not to look into laser in the future.
The doctor also prescribed some drops what i should pour into my eye.
I already tried them but i don't think it would help anything, because
the damage was done inside my eye. Anyway, today morning, i thought
the pain was gone, but this afternoon it came back even stronger, so
definitely something is hurt.

I don't intend to sue my employer, although actually my superior told
me that its safe to look through that telescope, but i just don't
want to mess with him, and i'm leaving that company anyway. Prior to
installation i also asked a producer whether its safe, and they sent
me some certificates
http://img402.imageshack.us/img402/3938/laserrm6.jpg saying that it
is totally safe, either class 1 and class 1m their laser products.

Only after i realized something is wrong with my eye i started
searching the net and found out that class 1m lasers are not safe when
look through the optical lenses, and i was wearing eye contacts and
looked through the telescope. That laser emits 16mW light, while
after focused it is hundreds of Wats inside the eye. I wrote them
back and tell what has happened, but they just stopped answering me.

I just feel bad that i trusted them, and i should have rather checked
it myself :-( anyway, as i said the pain is still strong, so
i'm just waiting till its gone, and hope my vision will recover.

previous link doesn't work, this should be ok:
http://images31.fotosik.pl/132/c2ba2de8561082cc.jpg

these are the certificates are received from a producer.

--
regards
Tom

In article
<a0edc898-7f6a-4554-b0e8-(E-Mail Removed)>,
(E-Mail Removed) wrote:

> Thanks for your responses. Yesterday I went to an emergency doctor ,
> she poured some drops in my eyes and examined them with a flashlight.
> She said that my right eye is injured and i should let it heal, and
> not to look into laser in the future.
> The doctor also prescribed some drops what i should pour into my eye.
> I already tried them but i don't think it would help anything, because
> the damage was done inside my eye.

I'm not a doctor, but based on my experience with drops, *lots* of
experience, most of them penetrate the eye and work inside. There are
various tricks to this, otherwise the drops just drain into your sinuses
without much chance to work. If you weren't trained on these, call your
pharmacist or the doctor's office and ask.

--
Dan Abel
Petaluma, California USA
(E-Mail Removed)

On Feb 5, 10:18 am, tomasz...@gmail.com wrote:
> Thanks for your responses. Yesterday I went to an emergency doctor ,
> she poured some drops in my eyes and examined them with a flashlight.
> She said that my right eye is injured and i should let it heal, and
> not to look into laser in the future.
> The doctor also prescribed some drops what i should pour into my eye.
> I already tried them but i don't think it would help anything, because
> the damage was done inside my eye. Anyway, today morning, i thought
> the pain was gone, but this afternoon it came back even stronger, so
> definitely something is hurt.
>
> I don't intend to sue my employer, although actually my superior told
> me that its safe to look through that telescope, but i just don't
> want to mess with him, and i'm leaving that company anyway. Prior to
> installation i also asked a producer whether its safe, and they sent
> me some certificateshttp://img402.imageshack.us/img402/3938/laserrm6.jpg saying that it
> is totally safe, either class 1 and class 1m their laser products.
>
> Only after i realized something is wrong with my eye i started
> searching the net and found out that class 1m lasers are not safe when
> look through the optical lenses, and i was wearing eye contacts and
> looked through the telescope. That laser emits 16mW light, while
> after focused it is hundreds of Wats inside the eye. I wrote them
> back and tell what has happened, but they just stopped answering me.
>
> I just feel bad that i trusted them, and i should have rather checked
> it myself :-( anyway, as i said the pain is still strong, so
> i'm just waiting till its gone, and hope my vision will recover.

look, you need to see a retina specialist. a general medical doctor
or emergency room doctor using a "flashlight" to examine your eye
sounds ridiculous.

anyway, if you had actual laser damage to your retina the effect would
be vision blurring or vision loss rather than pain. eye drops would
be almost worthless.

but of course I wholeheartedly agree that you should not look directly
at a laser again with a telescope!

On or about Tue, 5 Feb 2008 07:18:41 -0800 (PST) did
(E-Mail Removed) dribble thusly:

>Only after i realized something is wrong with my eye i started
>searching the net and found out that class 1m lasers are not safe when
>look through the optical lenses, and i was wearing eye contacts and
>looked through the telescope. That laser emits 16mW light, while
>after focused it is hundreds of Wats inside the eye. I wrote them
>back and tell what has happened, but they just stopped answering me.

It's not looking through lenses that's the problem. That warning was
probably left vague to err on the side of caution. Looking at a laser
through contact lenses doesn't change anything over a person who
doesn't need them to see clearly.

Looking through a telescope, however, is another question. It's kind
of counter-intuitive, what a telescope actually does. It makes stars
brighter, because they are so far away that they can't be resolved as
anything but point sources. So all the extra light gathered by a
telescope lens is focused on the same spot.

But for anything that's not an optical point source, the telescope
magnifies the size of the image. It's collecting more light, but
spreading that light over a larger area. The more the image is
magnified, the dimmer it is (the same amount of light spread is over a
larger area). As it turns out, any extended image (i.e. not a point
source) will be brighter to your naked eye than through a telescope.

A laser very far away might appear to be a point source to a
telescope, but lasers are also coherent light. Any lens larger than
the beam width is already collecting all of the light, so it wouldn't
look any brighter through the telescope than to the naked eye.

As an extended image, the beam will be enlarged by the telescope. The
total energy of the beam will be spread over a larger area of your
retina (whatever isn't absorbed or reflected by the lenses - glass and
plastic are fairly opaque to infrared).

That doesn't necessarily make it safe. I'm not familiar with the
nature of class 1M ratings. You can safely look at the sun with your
naked eye when it's reasonably close to the horizon, without risk of
vision loss. That's because the heat can be adequately dissipated by
your retina. But if you look through a telescope, the sun will be
dimmer (because it's magnified), but spread over a much larger part of
your retina. The heat will not be dissipated fast enough, and you'll
suffer permanent loss of vision.

Something similar could be true of the laser - it's safe to look at
with the naked eye, but not magnified (again, something your contacts
can't do).
--
- Mike

Ignore the Python in me to send e-mail.

On Feb 5, 7:18 am, tomasz...@gmail.com wrote:
> Thanks for your responses. Yesterday I went to an emergency doctor ,
> she poured some drops in my eyes and examined them with a flashlight.
> She said that my right eye is injured and i should let it heal, and
> not to look into laser in the future.
> The doctor also prescribed some drops what i should pour into my eye.
> I already tried them but i don't think it would help anything, because
> the damage was done inside my eye. Anyway, today morning, i thought
> the pain was gone, but this afternoon it came back even stronger, so
> definitely something is hurt.

What were the drops she gave you?? Can you provide the name (or, at
least, the active ingredient)??

> I don't intend to sue my employer,

I don't think anybody here is recommending that you sue anybody. They
ARE, however, talking about notifying your employer IMMEDIATELY about
the injury (very smart and very important) AND about pursuing a
Workers Compensation claim.

This is NOT the same as a lawsuit. It is designed to provide you with
medical, and certain other benefits, in the event of a work related
injury.

It sounds like this is ver good advice in your case.

I hope you're okay.

<(E-Mail Removed)> wrote in message
news:a0edc898-7f6a-4554-b0e8-(E-Mail Removed)...
>
> Thanks for your responses. Yesterday I went to an emergency doctor ,
> she poured some drops in my eyes and examined them with a flashlight.
> She said that my right eye is injured and i should let it heal, and
> not to look into laser in the future.

You should see a retinal specialist or at least a general ophthalmologist
ASAP.

p.clar...@gmail.com wrote:
>look, you need to see a retina specialist. a general medical doctor
>or emergency room doctor using a "flashlight" to examine your eye
>sounds ridiculous.

it was an emergency hospital, but with different departments, and i
went to an eye specialist, on a separate floor, so it wasn't just a
general doctor. i could always go to another eye doctor to get a
second opinion tho.
And it wasn't a regular flashlight, definitely some special one, it
was emitting a vertical beam into my eye, and she was looking through
some sort of microscope, and examined both of my eyes, asking me to
look left, right, up and down. Before that she gave me some eye
drops to make my pupils bigger, i had to wait like half an hour.

>anyway, if you had actual laser damage to your retina the effect would
>be vision blurring or vision loss rather than pain. eye drops would
>be almost worthless.

i know, if my retina had been burned completely i would have lost my
sight, fortunately it hadn't, but something was damaged, the question
is what and how much?
normally i wear -2 contacts or glasses to see well, and after this
laser accident my right eye vision got worse, its like it requires -3
to see sharp, because that eye doctor allowed me to look through a
stronger lens and i could see sharper, but i don't know how many
diopters was that.
And also my right pupil is still noticeable bigger which is weird, and
of course that annoying pain doesn't go away. I'm still hoping i'll
recover from it, i'm pouring those eye drops every couple of hours
and started taking multivitamin pills, and drinking carrot juice,
which i read contains vitamin A , good for eyes.


Neil Brooks wrote:
>What were the drops she gave you?? Can you provide the name (or, at
>least, the active ingredient)??

the eye drops i got are called: diclofenacum natricum 0.1%, 5ml.
There are some ingredients listed on the box like: Polysorbate 80,
bor acid, sodium chloride, borax, water, and some other ingredient
which i can't translate, something with chloride.


>I don't think anybody here is recommending that you sue anybody. They
>ARE, however, talking about notifying your employer IMMEDIATELY about
>the injury (very smart and very important) AND about pursuing a
>Workers Compensation claim.
>
>This is NOT the same as a lawsuit. It is designed to provide you with
>medical, and certain other benefits, in the event of a work related
>injury.
>
>It sounds like this is ver good advice in your case.
>
>I hope you're okay.


Of course i told about this at my work, but it just made my boss mad
like he was afraid, so i told him that this only my business, as i
said i'm leaving that company anyway, for other reasons. I also had
to deal with microwaves transceivers what used to give me a headaches
for several days. For now i don't have anything to compensate, and i
hope i won't , i normally go to work as usual.

In the morning when i wake up , i almost don't feel any pain, but
later today it gets stronger, and afternoon its annoying, and its
strange because its like going down inside my head and to my right arm
and reaching my hand, like the pain is following some nerve path.


KlausK wrote:
>You should see a retinal specialist or at least a general ophthalmologist
>ASAP.

i don't think there are such specific doctors like 'retinal
specialist' in my country, only ophthalmologists, which is 'eye
doctor'. And i understand that its hard to examine an eyeball even
for a specialist. So thats why i don't know what exactly that laser
burned , whether only retina cells or some nerves too, what would
explain why i feel pain.


Mike Ruskai wrote:
>[...]A laser very far away might appear to be a point source to a
>telescope, but lasers are also coherent light. Any lens larger than
>the beam width is already collecting all of the light, so it wouldn't
>look any brighter through the telescope than to the naked eye. [........]

Mike, thanks for an interesting writeup.
a few words about that laser transceiver i was dealing with, here is
its front:
http://img255.imageshack.us/img255/3174/laserwk7.jpg
and the backplate with a telescope viewfinder i was looking through:
http://img142.imageshack.us/img142/6908/laser2jv8.jpg

that laser produces kind of a cone beam, so it was around 50cm
diameter infrared laser beam pointing at me, the source of the laser
was ~100 meters away.
And i think infrared can easily pass through glass, eg my infrared
keyfob to open the car. And those infrared lasers can be even
installed indoors behind windows, one of my colleague had such
installation. I read that only some special colored glass can block
infrared, so there are some amber protective goggles available. So
in my case my eye didn't pick a whole laser beam just a part of it
which was magnified by that telescope, but it was enough to hurt my
eye, i was installing it for about half an hour although , i wasn't
look through that telescope all the time, but i can't remember for how
long.

thanks all for your responses.
regards,
Tom