The Triangle Laser Safety Officer [TALSO] group had a great meeting Thursday, May 23 at GlaxoSmithKline in RTP. Thanks again to Jyl Burgener and GlaxoSmithKline for hosting this event. Several new members joined the group, and our only elected officer [TALSO President Dan Sprau] even drove up from Greenville to attend his first TALSO meeting.

The following topics were discussed:

I. Welcome & Introduce new folks

We reviewed the organization of TALSO. Several new members were recognized and welcomed into the group. A revised/updated TALSO member contact list was requested & attached to these minutes. Please e-mail me with any update/corrections

II. Review notes from Feb. 14 Meeting

We recalled our previous discussion on conducting a laser safety hazard evaluation and on actual laser accidents & related lessons of which we had first hand experience.

III. Discussion: LIA's new Certified Laser Safety Officer program & exam [scheduled for October 13, 2002]

www.certified-lso.org

Rich Greene of Laser Institute of America presented a brief overview of the new certified LSO program. He indicated (among other things) that the CLSO exam would be comprised of about 90% questions from the ANSI standard and 10% from various applicable regulations. A question and answer session and good discussion ensued. TALSO will continue monitoring this new development.

IV. Brief overview of Rockwell Laser Industries' Laser Safety course by recent graduate Alvin Blount

Alvin briefed the group on his learnings from his recently completed Rockwell Laser Industries course. He primarily related laser pointer issues, and noted the course instructor's opinion that the medical surveillance guidance in the ANSI standard would probably be relaxed in the next edition. In the ensuing discussion one person said they'd been exposed to laser pointer beams while driving [perhaps we should wear green tinted sunglasses while driving to prevent laser pointer induced temporary flash blindness]. We also noted NC law on this issue, and I was actioned to provide those regs:

NC Law [General Statutes] §14-34.8: Unlawful to intentionally point a laser beam at a law enforcement officer, or the head/face of another person [except for medical or law enforcement purposes].

See the actual regs at:

http://www.ncga.state.nc.us/Statutes/GeneralStatutes/HTML/BySection/Chapter_14/GS_14-34.8.html

V. Any other business

a. Dr. Wolbarsht sent his regrets; an out of town meeting prevented his attendance. However he expressed his support and encouragement for the TALSO effort and offered these two items to be shared:

- Suggestion: Instruct laser operators that their first action upon suspecting a laser injury should be to wash their hands. The reason: many folks complaining of laser eye injury, even in retinal hazard region wavelengths, present classic symptoms of corneal abrasion, probably caused by rubbing grit and dirt into their eyes with dirty hands in response to a suspected laser injury!

- Echoed the indication Alvin heard from RLI that the medical surveillance requirement in ANSI will be significantly diminished in next version of the standard.

b. Noted "Human behavioral factors in laser safety" article by Rick Mannix in May '02 edition of Journal of Laser Applications. This journal rarely has any safety articles, but this one provided some decent program management insights.

c. Ken Kretchman agreed to spearhead the alignment training effort by drafting an outline for laser alignment training for distribution to the group for review/comment, hopefully leading towards development of a formal training program.

VI. Schedule next meeting:

Resolved: 2:30 PM on Thursday, 19-Sep-02 at GSK

Here's the [growing] brainstormed list of specific discussion topics for upcoming meetings:

- Medical Surveillance (why, whom & how much?)

- Entry way controls for class 4 systems

- Tracking high power diode lasers

- Appropriate fire-proof materials

- Handling multiple wavelength lasers (e.g. TI:Sapphire)

- Release of class 3b & 4 lasers into surplus & unrestricted use

- Generate list of low-cost solutions to laser safety challenges & "low hanging fruit" that get the most impact for the least resource expended in laser safety programs

- Generate a list of common excuses for not complying with laser safety guidance, and ways to address these excuses

- Discussion of technical & calculational issues; work problems, etc.