Laser Safety

[billy bobinski]

Hi All,

 

I know there are laser specific sites out there, but this is just a quick question that I know a lot of you will probably know the answer to.

 

I have used lasers before, but not in small venues, ie. up to 200, and never used them for audience scanning. I have been to laserist.org and read all their safety bulletins and have got the bones of ANSI regs, but nowhere does it really tell me about any licensing that may come into play.

 

So, to perform scans or point the beams into an audience in any way in the UK, are there any local or national licensing or certification issues that I may need to comply with?

 

Cheers,

Billy

[Dmills]

It all comes down to the venues license (Many have explicit requirements when lasers are in use), and the council will then normally want to see paperwork per HS(G) 95 and friends. Outdoor shows get into the issues of co-ordinating with the CAA (actually not too bad as long as you have sufficient notice).

 

Talk to the councils licensing department, see if they have a laser safety officer and if so, talk to them, they mostly don't bite as long as you know about things like MPE limits.

 

Personally I will never point a static beam into a crowd (and have scan failure detectors to ensure this), and crowd scanning is (for me) limited to large patterns at way less then a watt total beam power (with deliberately poor divergence).

 

Obviously (one would hope) crowd scanning with anything Q switched is right out!

 

This almost sounds like a question more for photonlexicon then here.

 

Regards, Dan.

[billy bobinski]

Thanks for the reply, Dan,

 

Yes, you're right about the Q switched or pulsed beams and the idea of a single beam is right out of the window, I had sussed that already no matter the power of the laser, I just wanted to carify the legal side of things.

 

To put it in a nutshell you have the burden of proof that you are trained and competent to operate the equipment and have sufficient knowledge to use it in a safe way in a public environment. (Basic statutory Health and Safety obligations then).

 

Any other advise if this is not the case would be welcome.

 

Cheers!

[paulears]

Venue licenses used to be useful documents - clearly saying what you can and can't do. Now, like the many other 'improvements' they are much more vague and place the onus on the license to predict what is safe/not safe and sort it out for themselves while the authority remains to prosecute if they get it wrong. Our own license is almost empty of useful info now. Lasers don't even get a mention, neither does the safety curtain, or other 'old' features.

[billy bobinski]

Just as I thought really, they make it as vague as possible and leave it to us to do absolutely everything in our power to cover our backsides and then start waving reams of legal stuff at us if anything does go wrong.

 

So basically, it's a case of arming yourself with as much info as possible, having a stock RA available and trying to think of the unthinkable.

 

Cheers!!

 

I suppose this is now getting into the realms of the office.

[greenalien]

You could always book yourself onto a laser safety course - those run by LASER VISUALS have a good reputation - next course is on 7th September.

[PocketJem]

Hi Billy

 

I would respectfully suggest that you pop over to http://www.photonlexicon.com

 

That is a forum mainly aimed at entertainment lasers and what could be deemed 'proper' lasers rather than pointers etc. There are some *very* knowledgeable people on there who would be only too pleased to help out.

 

As previously mentioned, there are safety courses run by James and Julie at Laservisuals. These courses will give you an excellent grounding in the safety aspects of using lasers in entertainment, and introduce you to the joys of calculating MPE's etc.

 

You're not too far from me (I'm in Wakefield). What is it that you're doing?, do you work in a club or are you wanting to hire some lasers etc?

 

Cheers

 

Jem

 

P.S. Nice to see another PL'er over here John :)

[billy bobinski]

Cheers John (and others)

 

Thanks for the pointers, I'll certainly look into a course at some point, but at the moment, I'm not considering using them to such a great degree to justify the cost.

 

I'm going to be using the lasers as the occasional effect for live bands more than anything else. They are going to be run by DMX from an operated desk, using presets (not on a stand alone pre-program) so that I have full control of where the beams are going and they are going to be less than 100mW.

 

This is the main reason why I asked about the H&S side of it in the first place because I will be taking precautions from the outset.

 

Oh, by the way I have checked out 'the other side', very interesting, but as I say, I'm not going for the full show, just as specials.

[PocketJem]

Cheers John (and others)

 

Thanks for the pointers, I'll certainly look into a course at some point, but at the moment, I'm not considering using them to such a great degree to justify the cost.

 

I'm going to be using the lasers as the occasional effect for live bands more than anything else. They are going to be run by DMX from an operated desk, using presets (not on a stand alone pre-program) so that I have full control of where the beams are going and they are going to be less than 100mW.

 

This is the main reason why I asked about the H&S side of it in the first place because I will be taking precautions from the outset.

 

Oh, by the way I have checked out 'the other side', very interesting, but as I say, I'm not going for the full show, just as specials.

 

If you ever need to hire any lasers in, just give me a shout :)

 

I have a 1.5 watt RGB and two 1 watt greens + full Pangolin QM2000.Net control gear (runs over CAT5) & MIDI controller. Also have SMStoLaser software, Unique 2 Hazer, 8' x 6' fastfold front/rear projection screen etc.

 

Cheers

 

Jem

[billy bobinski]

Cheers Jem,

 

Certainly will make a note of that for future ref.

 

Billy