laser light, causing increased sensitivity (phototoxicity). Beyond the question of physical injury to the eye from a laser pointer, several other undesirable effects are possible. These include short-lived flash blindness if the beam is encountered in darkened surroundings, as when driving at night. This may result in momentary loss of vehicular control. Lasers pointed at aircraft are a hazard to aviation. A police officer seeing a red dot on his chest may conclude that a sniper is targeting him and take aggressive action. In addition, the startle reflex exhibited by some exposed unexpectedly to laser light of this sort has been reported to have resulted in cases of self-injury or loss of control. For these and similar reasons, the US Food and Drug Administration has advised that laser pointers are not toys and should not be used by minors except under the direct supervision of an adult. Fibre optics for communications Fibre optic laser safety is characterised by the fact that in normal operation the light beam is inaccessible, so something has to be unplugged or broken for it to become accessible. The resultant exit beam is quite divergent, so eye safety is highly dependent on distance, and if a magnifying device is used. In practice, accidental exposure to the large majority of installed systems is unlikely to have any health impact, since power levels are usually below 1 mW and the wavelength in the infra-red, e.g. Class 1. However, there are a few significant exceptions. Most single mode/multi mode fiber systems actually use infra-red light, invisible to the human eye. In this case, there is no eye aversion response. A special case is systems operating at 670–1000 nm, where the beam may appear to be a dull red, even if the light beam is actually very intense. Technicians may also use red lasers for fault finding at around 628–670 nm. These can create a significant hazard if viewed incorrectly, particularly if they are abnormally high power. Such visible fault finders are usually classified as Class 2 up to 1 mW, and Class 2M up to 10 mW. High power optical amplifiers are used in long distance systems. They use internal pump lasers with power levels up to a few watts, which is a major hazard. However, these power levels are contained within the amplifier module. Any system employing typical optical connectors (i.e. not expanded beam) cannot typically exceed about