One Australian teenager permanently damaged his eyesight while playing with laser pointer. This is why optometrists warned the parents that laser pointers are not toys for their children.
After playing with his laser pointer this 14-year-old boy had problems with his eyesight and went to see optometrists Ben Armitage.
Armitage told the ABC that the boy came to see him on a Friday night. The boy told him that he shined in his eyes with a laser pointer for a brief period of time and therefore the laser pointer caused the boy to lose 75 percent of his vision in each eye.
According to Armitage the back of his eyes on both sides was showing laser burns, so he actually managed to burn the retina at the back of the eye near an area called the macular.
Even though the teenager was not feeling any pain in the moment of the incident, his vision was damaged almost instantly.
Optometrists Ben Armitage, explains that this is the area where your detailed central vision takes place and therefore this had somewhat of an exaggerated effect on how much sight he’s lost.
The worst thing in this case is that the boy’s eyesight cannot be improved with glasses.
Armitage explains that the way the eye works is that the majority of your usable vision is central, including all for example your color vision, takes place in a very small area. He also said that it was as if the damage done to the boy’s eyes was akin to a broken film camera, in that no matter the quality of the lens on the front, the damage to the sensor at the back cannot be remedied.
TheFood and Drug Administration’s Center for Devices and Radiological health conducted a study, which showed that even a 5 mW laser could cause damage, and those who are labeled in the 3-5mW range have no reported cases of eye damage. In the U.S. most of the laser pointers abide by these regulations. However some of the lasers that are improperly imported exceed this federal safety limits.
Source: Natural Medicine Box