I irradiated the laser beam to the eyes of the audience, more than 30 people are blind

At the Akvamarin Festival, Russia's techno concert, more than 30 spectators were exposed to laser beams on their eyes on July 6, and they had the possibility of getting wounded and blind. Several people have already lost 80% of their eyesight, according to a doctor said they can not recover.

According to other audiences who were on the scene, the cameras and video cameras they had had also been damaged. It seems that it was a fairly powerful laser beam.

What is going to happen if this happens, details are from the following.
Blinded by the Light at Techno Concert - Kommersant Moscow

Originally this concert was announced on the fans' website and about 1,000 people gathered. Because there was heavy rain on the night of July 5th of the previous day, the tent was set on the dance floor, and the laser beam was irradiated several times toward the audience from the sky part of the venue.

According to one of the participants, when the laser beam hit the eyes, I felt as if I was watching the sun for a long time and I could not see anything in sight, so I did not return to the original even after two days passed He said he went to the hospital on the day.

According to police in Moscow it is extremely difficult to find the organizer of this concert.

The green laser beam emits more than 50 times stronger light than the red laser beam,Green laser pointer(Output 400 mW, reaching distance of about 300 km, 98 thousands yen), it is possible to ignite the cigarettes without difficulty and it can be confirmed that the light advances straight ahead as below.


I can not imagine that this was a high power laser so far, but let's stop it because it is dangerous to irradiate people anyway.

2008/07/15 4:18 postscript
According to the storyteller who used to work at the company of a device that outputs such a laser before, the fact that "the green laser beam emits 50 times more intense light than the red laser beam" at the link point Because of errors, the green laser is not stronger than the red laser, "visibility" is high, that is, the red color of the laser is dark, so it seems that several times the power is necessary to make it feel the same brightness is.

Also, in club-related events, audience scanning (irradiating a laser beam on audience seats) is not uncommon, and output that also outputs 1 W instead of 400 mw is used, but the audience scanning is performed with MPE (maximum permissible exposure) and AEL It is said that it is operated safely based on various standards of numerical limit which can be watched briefly, such as allowable radiation exposure limit).

Originally, these devices are devices that cost millions to tens of millions of yen, but it is also true that inexpensive (tens of thousands of yen) of poor quality, laser equipment with no protective device is on the market, small It is said that the fact that the company uses this, and that operators with no knowledge are operating ... ....