IEC 60825-1 is applicable to safety of laser products. For convenience it is divided into three separate sections: Section One (General) and the annexes; Section Two (Manufacturing requirements); and Section Three (User's guide* ).

A laser product may consist of a single laser with or without a separate power supply or may incorporate one or more lasers in a complex optical, electrical, or mechanical system. Typically, laser products are used for demonstration of physical and optical phenomena; materials processing; data reading and storage; transmission and display of information; etc.

Such systems have found use in industry, business, entertainment, research, education and medicine. However, laser products which are sold to other manufacturers for use as components of any system for subsequent sale are not subject to IEC 60825-1, since the final product will itself be subject to this standard.

Throughout this part 1 light emitting diodes (LED) are included whenever the word "laser" is used.