Danger! Be Careful with Those Green Laser Pointers!

The New York Times (3/1, D5, Negroni) reports that “eye doctors around the world are warning that recent cases of teenagers who suffered eye damage while playing with high-powered green laser pointers are likely to be just the first of many.” The laser “pointers, which have also been implicated in a ninefold increase over five years in reports of lasers’ being aimed at airplanes, are easier than ever to order online, doctors say — even though they are 10 to 20 times as powerful as the legal limit set by the Food and Drug Administration,” producing as much as 50 milliwatts of power, more than enough to burn the fovea, the center part of the retina. What’s more, the light from green lasers “is more easily absorbed by the retina than red, so it requires less exposure to cause damage.”

By Dr. Lynn Hellerstein, Colorado Optometrist in Vision Therapy & Visual Processing