Cultural change to prevent laser eye injuries in R&D labs

No laser user wants to sustain a laser eye injury. Unfortunately, many laser users, most commonly experienced researchers and inexperienced graduate students, are the injured person. More unforgiveable is the general acceptance of this scenario as part of the research & development experience. How do senior researchers, safety personnel and management stop this trend? The answer lies in a cultural change that involves institutional training, user mentoring, hazard awareness by users and administrative controls. None of these would inhibit research activities. As a matter of fact, proper implementation of these controls would increase research productivity.