Legal action delays accident reporting

17 Jun 2002

Reporting of accidents and incidents involving lasers often takes up to four years, says Jim Rockwell of Rockwell Laser Industries in Cincinnati, Ohio.

"It's interesting how data seems to surface after litigation is over and memory becomes a little freer," he told ILSC 99.

The Rockwell Laser Incident Database, based in the US, is the only service that records laser related-accidents from around the world. By the end of 1998 it recorded a cumulative total of 395 cases since it began in 1964.

Rockwell said that the figure of 395 included 31 "new" incidents in the years 1997 and 1998, and 34 cases reported belatedly for the years prior to 1997.

He believes that the total number of accidents recorded by the database "reflects somewhere between 10% and 20% of the total universe of laser related exposure incidents." Some 80% of the incidents recorded on the database come from the US.