Welcome to the 2015/1 Newsletter on “Laser, LED and Lamp Safety”

IEC 60825-1 Edition 3

Following a six year development phase - with significant scientific input from our group and our Dr. Karl Schulmeister having been project leader - we are happy that the international laser product safety standard IEC 60825-1 Edition 3.0 was published in May 2014 and was also published in the meantime in most countries as national standard (Japan, Australia, Europe…). The first country in Europe to publish the standard as “EN” was the UK, where it was published as BS EN 60825-1 in August 2014. The German standard DIN EN 60825-1 is to be published in the next few weeks:

>> Link to DIN EN 60825-1 sales

EN 60825-1 Edition 3.0 was listed in April 2015 in the official Journal of the EU as harmonized standard under the Low Voltage Directive. The transition period for Edition 2.0 is until June 2017.

>> Official Journal

CDRH acceptance and IECEE CB-Scheme

For the US market, the CDRH has so far not issued a new "Laser Notice" that would permit applying Edition 3.0 in the same way as Edition 2.0 was accepted under Laser Notice 50. As soon as the CDRH issues a respective Laser Notice, we will issue a newsletter.

Under the IECEE CB-Scheme, the IEC 60825-1 Edition 3.0 Test Report Form (TRF) is available for testing of products; the TRF was developed on behalf of IECEE by personnel of our CB-Testing Laboratory.

Publications on IEC 60825-1

Members of our team were involved significantly in the development of both the new limits (under the responsibility of ICNIRP) as well as Edition 3.0 of IEC 60825-1 itself. We are continuously placing an emphasis on publishing papers that discuss and review relevant issues and to make this information freely available.

Please see our articles on various aspects regarding the application of IEC 60825-1 (in section “Laser Safety”) and on scientific work to support the development of the limits (in section “Bioeffects, Exposure Limits and Risk”). Although our main expertise and activity is on IEC 60825-1, the scientific work on spot size dependence also supported the revision of ANSI Z136.1 (2014).

>> Free download area

IEC 62471-5 published

In June 2015, IEC 62471-5 on photobiological safety of image projectors was published. The concept of risk groups is eqivalent to IEC 62471. The scope includes laser illuminated projectors (LIP) but does not include scanned emission. The emission limits for the determination of the risk groups were already adopted from the 2013 ICNIRP limit guidelines. The parent standard IEC 62471 is under revision (currently in the Committee Draft phase) and will be re-published as IEC 62471-1.

>> Preview IEC 62471-5

Four new ILSC papers as Download

ILSC 2015 took place in March 2015 in Albuquerque. Our team presented four papers on IEC 60825-1 (pulsed emission, extended sources) as well as a rationale for IEC 62471-5 in cooperation with an expert from BARCO, and a proposal for an improved method to determine the angular subtense of the apparent source for the IEC 62471 series. The proceeding papers are available in our download section:

>> Download area

We are also happy to announce that Dr. Karl Schulmeister received the “Rockwell Award” in recognition of his contributions to the field of laser safety through publications and work on standardisation over the last 20 years.

>> Info Rockwell Award LIA