Army didn't do much if any training on laser safety back in the day when first issuing high power lasers to the blue cord wearers other than to say don't remove the blue screw, so what did Soldiers do they removed the blue screw. All cool for deployments but not that cool for force on force training (because when they removed the screw they usually lost it). Only case of laser eye damage I can specifically remember resulted in a safety of use message across the Army was when a Soldier with an overseas green laser pointer inadvertently reflected the green laser off the mirror on the turret into his eye causing retinal burns and permanent blindness in that one eye. I am sure there was more to the story.Not stupid.
Yes, stuff reflects. But same as all the other threats of exposure. It's tiny bits getting illuminated and bouncing light all over. A tiny, tiny, tiny fraction of the radiation is coming back at you then.
Happy to rant on about eye safety with lasers if needed. Lots of misunderstanding of what eye-safe means, and what damage mechanisms are. Army has public documentation on several of the early issues and they are interesting. A lot about, as stated above, know the equipment, and positively safe it when not in use.
I think there might have been some safety of use messages for PEQ's and such but I would have to do some digging.
An interesting video https://safety.army.mil/MEDIA/Video-Library/Video-Player/VideoId/42/UseHtml5/True it lists some incidents of laser use (all green visible laser incidents and the one I mentioned above). What we don't know is how many IR laser incidents there have been since the victim usually doesn't know they have been hit by an IR laser.
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