I notice quite often there appears to be some confusion over what EN 60825-1:2007 is and where it fits in among EU legislation, so I’m taking a moment to try and summarise its purpose and that of the other laser related legislation and guidance in the EU.
Even with many of the professional show providers I regularly come across when assessing show safety, there is some confusion over what EN 60825-1:2007 is about, and very little awareness of other laser related legislation, so hopefully a few of those who I am sure lurk here, will pick up a tip or two.
EN 60825-1:2007 the Product Safety Standard
IEC 60825-1, EN 60825-1, BS EN 60825-1, what do they mean? Primarily, they are product safety standards. And in practice the prefix to the 60825-1 makes little difference to their content.
The people that actually write the standard are a committee within the IEC (International Electrotechnical Commission), made up of representatives from different nations around the world. This committee works continually at gradually evolving the standard by holding several meetings a year, with aim to publish updates normally every 5-6 years. The document they produce is prefixed by the IEC designation.
The supply of any goods within the European Community requires that a ‘CE’ mark is placed on the product, and that a ‘Declaration of Conformity’ is provided by the supplier of the product. (Note the legal responsibility for this falls on the supplier, not the manufacturer, as many assume. i.e. that means the legal obligation to declare conformity falls on the supplier of a product being imported from outside the EU, not the factory in China for example.)
The ‘CE’ mark is intended to demonstrate that a product meets the minimum safety requirements for supply in European member states. Now this is where IEC 60825-1:2007 comes into play… The EC has adopted the IEC standard as it own ‘EN’ standard, which gets published in the EU Journal. Because the standard has become adopted it is prefixed with an EN, so becomes EN 60825-1:2007. In essence however, the two documents contain the same information.
What does change however is that the document takes on a new legal status and becomes a ‘Harmonised Standard’. Such harmonised standards, published in the EU journal, state the minimum safety features a product must incorporate to demonstrate safety compliance, and therefore be fit to have a ‘CE’ mark placed on them.
i.e. EN 60825-1:2007 describes how a laser product should be classified, (Class 1, Class 4 etc), and what product features are needed, based on the classification, in order for it to have a CE mark placed on it.
Individual Member States may additionally adopt the EN standard by adding their own designation to the EN standard, such as in the UK where the ‘British Standard’ is described as BS EN 60825-1:2007. In Germany they use DE, etc.
So in summary EN 60826-1:2007 is nothing more than a product safety standard. It does not tell people how to do shows or work with lasers safely (as I often see people write in their method statements etc).
User Guidance
Guidance for the safe use of lasers is provided in several other IEC originating documents. Of specific interest to the laser show operator is IEC/TR 60825-3:2008 Guidance for Laser Displays and Shows and IEC/TR 60825-14:2004 A User’s Guide.
The first document is very useful and has been written, as the title suggests, with the laser show user in mind. The second document is still worth a read if you are serious about laser safety, but it is more orientated towards laser applications that isolate laser radiation.
In the UK we have our own 30 page guidance document published by the Health and Safety Executive (HSE) that is commonly referred to by its publication number HS(G)95.
All of these guidance documents are just that…, guidance. So it is not mandatory to follow what is set out in them. However, as published H&S guidance from a government agency, and through the British Standards Institute (PD IEC/TR 60825-3:2008 and PD IEC/TR 60825-14:2004), it is difficult guidance to ignore, and that which most venues, insurance companies, and enforcement agencies expect as a minimum.
Specific Legislation on Laser Usage?
Over the past year there has been some talk of specific legislation affecting the use of lasers in Europe. This came about as a result of EC Directive 2006/25/EC known as the Physical Agents (Artificial Optical Radiation) Directive or shortened to AORD. The purpose of the Directive is to provide a minimum level of protection for workers with the potential to be exposed to harmful levels of artificial optical radiation, across the whole of the European Union.
The Directive was to be implemented by each of the EU’s member states as local law by the end of April 2010. In the UK we have the Directive transposed to UK law through the Control of Artificial Optical Radiation at Work Regulations 2010, which is available from HSE’s website. Other EU member states will have their own legislation in place now too.
The Directive requires that all member states make legal provision to oblige employers to assess and limit worker exposure to harmful levels of optical radiation. It sets, as legal limits, the amount of optical radiation workers can be exposed to. These limits are now the same across the whole of the EU, which are based on the ICNIRP laser exposure limits previously used for MPE assessment.
ILDA 10x MPE Guidance
What of ILDA’s 10x MPE Guidance? – This is a bit of a tricky one… In reality there is ‘probably’ not a significant chance of causing a major injury to a person if they are exposed to laser radiation that 10x the MPE. However to state that you are deliberately exposing people to 10x what are, in Europe, legal limits is not without problem too. For technically it is now a criminal offence to expose a worker to laser radiation above the MPE. So bang goes any insurance cover, and you could run the risk of criminal prosecution.
If you’ve made it this far down the post, thank you for reading, and I hope you found it of use!
Best regards
James Stewart
LVR Limited