FLORIDA CHAPTER SYSTEM SAFETY SOCIETY

SUBJECT: Meeting Minutes for June 18, 1997

Place: Fat Boy's on Colonial in Orlando

Topic: Laser Safety

Speakers: Wesley Marshall and Frank Zelesky

Minutes:

Two main subjects were addressed at the meeting: the program consisting of two speakers on laser safety, and the election of new officers.

Program:

The first speaker was Westley J. Marshall of the U.S. Army Center for Health Promotion and Preventative Medicine at Aberdeen Proving Ground in Maryland.

Mr. Marshall presented a brief history of laser safety standards followed by an introduction to the status of various standards around the world. Two basic categories of standards were discussed, standards for laser manufacturers and standards for laser users. Standards for manufacturers include the federal product performance standard administered by the FDA, MIL-STD-1425A used by military agencies for applications exempted from the FDA requirements, and the international standard - IEC 825-1.

User standards discussed included the ANSI Z136 series (civil), TB MED 524 (an Army standard) and IEC 825-1 (the same international standard containing restrictions on both manufacturers and users).

Mr. Marshall then discussed some of the technical differences between the various standards. Some of the differences include differences in classifications and differences in the time period upon which the exposure limits are based.

Mr. Marshall concluded his presentation with a discussion of the ANSI Z136.6 standard on the safe use of lasers in outdoor environments. The standard is presently in draft form.

The second speaker was Mr. Frank Zelesky, P.E., C.S.P. of Zelesky Consulting. Mr. Zelesky discussed the application of system safety techniques to systems which include lasers. Mr. Zelesky emphasized that the use of system safety techniques is valuable because they can indicate where the most "bang for the buck" in terms of improving safety, can be found.

Mr. Zelesky first presented some technical terms including NOHD (Nominal Ocular Hazard Distance) which depends of many factors including beam divergence, power, wavelength, and pulse width.

As an example, a detailed fault tree was presented which provided a breakdown of failure modes which could lead to overexposure of personnel to laser energy. Probability and severity information were combined to discover the branches of the tree where the most progress in reducing risk could be made. In this example, faults due to human error dominated to total risk and therefore, reduction of human error would be the best way to improve safety.

Election of Officers:

An announcement was made at the beginning of the meeting that ballots would be collected until the end of the meeting. At the end of the meeting, the submitted ballots were counted.

The slate of candidates on the ballot was as follows:

President: Mike Willoughby

President-Elect: Mike Kochmann

Treasurer: Fred Wachsman

Secretary: John Wolf

All of the ballots received voted for the nominated candidates and the new officers were thereby elected. The new officers will hold office from June 1997 to June 1998.

Attendees:

1. Mike Willoughby

2. Frank Zelesky

3. Barbara Sams

4. Harry Whitmer

5. Bill Valentino

6. Doug Freund

7. Connie and Mike Perry

8. Fred Wachsman

9. John Wolf

10. Lynn Smith

11. Mike Kochmann

12. Wesley Marshall

Meeting minutes submitted by John Wolf, secretary, Florida Chapter, System Safety Society.