IEC 825-1 eye safety classification of some consumer electronic products

The amended IEC 825-1 (and consequently CENELEC EN 60825-1) laser safety classification document, incorporates changes from the previous issue which although improve the maximum allowed emitted LED intensity, it still poses problems to the classification of free space optical link products. The changes from the previous issue are mainly concerned with LEDs, allow approximately 50 times higher output optical power from the previous specification. We show that in spite of the changes, most of the existing free space optical links cannot be classified as class 1. Calculations are given for class 1 classification, based on accessible exposure limits (AEL), of maximum permissible source intensity in mW/Sr, for typical products available in the market