Abstract

We found that it is very dangerous to stare directly at the free end of an optical cable excited by a GaAlAs laser or by a high radiance LED. We determined the minimum tolerable distance between the human eye and the cable end. In the case of a cable with one multimode fiber, the typical safety zone should be 1 m when using a laser light source and 15 cm when using an LED. In the case of a single mode fiber the critical distance is approximately two to four times as large as in the multimode case; however, when taking into account typical values of the power level in single mode fibers, the critical distance is ≈1 m as well. For N fibers within the cable the critical distance agrees with that of the single fiber, provided that the fibers are not too closely packaged.

© 1977 Optical Society of America

Handling optical cables: safety aspects; comments

J. C. North
Appl. Opt. 17(13) 1987-1987 (1978)

Handling optical cables: safety aspects; author's reply to comments

C. C. Timmermann
Appl. Opt. 17(13) 1987_1-1987 (1978)

Toward the development of laser safety standards for fiber-optic communication systems

R. C. Petersen and D. H. Sliney
Appl. Opt. 25(7) 1038-1047 (1986)

Dry processing of high resolution and high aspect ratio structures in GaAs-AlxGa₁₋xAs for integrated optics

S. Somekh and H. C. Casey
Appl. Opt. 16(1) 126-136 (1977)

Pulse delay measurements in the zero material dispersion wavelength region for optical fibers

L. G. Cohen and Chinlon Lin
Appl. Opt. 16(12) 3136-3139 (1977)