As with other electrical or electronic medical equipment, lasers and IPL systems in the clinical or spa environment may pose electrical safety problems as well. Potential hazards of electrical shock exist, requiring appropriate grounding, and other electrical safety laser use, and biomedical engineers and medical electronics technicians familiar with safe installation of electrical and electronic equipment in the hospital, clinical, or spa environment should have no difficulty in providing guidance for the safe electrical installation and use of laser equipment [1,10]. Only trained service personnel should access the high-voltage power supplies employed with IPL and flashlamp-pulsed lasers, since capacitor discharges can be lethal. Stored charge, even after the system is disconnected at the wall-plug, have produced lethal discharges.
Tissue-ablative laser procedures—just as with electrosurgical techniques—can produce potentially hazardous airborne contaminants from the photovaporization of tissues. Unfortunately, the vaporized tissue (“smoke”) from laser surgery has often been referred to as “laser smoke” or the “laser plume,” suggesting that it is unique to laser surgery. This emphasis on the laser origin has frequently led to the result that vaporized tissue fragments from pyrolysis products of tissue from electrosurgery have been overlooked as having the same degree of hazard. Vaporized tissue in sufficient quantities must receive special attention, and local exhaust ventilation almost always will be required [1,33]. The pyrolysis products are similar to those resulting from the barbecuing of meats. They contain toxic by-products and known carcinogens such as nitrosamines. A number of studies have measured the concentration of potentially hazardous airborne contaminants in conventional laser-operating rooms, with the result that concentration are shown to be kept below permissible concentrations with appropriate exhaust ventilation [1]. The studies of both the chemical toxicity of pyrolysis products and of the potential viability of infectious particulates (e. g., viral fragments) have shown real cause for concern, unless very good exhaust ventilation and respiratory protection are employed [33-35].