LIA introduces online laser safety awareness course

Orlando, FL - The Laser Institute of America (LIA) has created a new online Laser Safety Awareness course tailor-made for the rapidly increasing nonmedical laser workforce.

LSOs or "laser area personnel" can sign up from anywhere in the world to complete this highly focused training session in about two hours. The Laser Safety Awareness course, similar to other LIA online programs, allows three days of access, so users can review the material at a pace that works best for them. Study the slides and accompanying audio lesson in consecutive order, or choose which areas you’d like to study first. At the end of your training, you will receive a certificate via email acknowledging you completed the course.

"We are trying to give LSOs the ability to train staff without having to hold an in-house session or having to send people anywhere for training. This is a training tool for the LSO," explains LIA education director Gus Anibarro. "It will be short and to the point, covering the basics of laser safety for people who are operating the laser or who are going to be working within the laser environment."

The course will address basic laser physics, beam and non-beam hazards, laser system control measures, and current standards and regulations. Based on the ANSI Z136.1, Safe Use of Lasers standard, this course will detail the important parameters that can cause bodily harm. LIA is the secretariat of the ANSI Z136 laser safety standards.

"Laser area personnel need to know the hazards that may be present when working with Class 3B or 4 lasers" Anibarro says. It does not matter who makes the laser, whether it is fiber, disc or diode, or what application - laser cutting, laser drilling, laser welding, laser cladding - the laser is used for.

The Laser Safety Awareness course costs $70 per trainee, but LIA is offering a bulk discount based on the number of "seats" an LSO purchases.