Powerful lasers that are easily purchased online pose a serious danger to vision, according to a new report.
Doctors from the Duke University Medical Center in Durham, North Carolina, report on the case of a nine-year-old boy who showed up at their hospital after being blinded by an adult playing with a handheld laser.
“Until he came in, no one had realized there was an actual injury and we saw the bleeding,” Dr. Cynthia Toth, one of the authors of the new report, told Reuters Health.
The high-power laser had passed through the boy’s eye lenses and burst the blood vessels in the back of his eyes.
“This was a larger device that was sold as some toy, but it’s a dangerous weapon,” Toth said. “You can start a fire with the power that was coming out of that one.”
