ELECTRICAL SAFETY QUIZ

BELIEF #5:

A COMPACT DISC PLAYER LASER BEAM THAT IS OUT OF ALIGNMENT CAN ZAP YOU.

No chance. To begin with, a CD laser&emdash;the beam of light which "reads" the audio information on the surface of the disc&emdash;is well-shielded. It s also designed to be self correcting.

So anything short of falling off a shelf is unlikely to affect the equipment's performance, says Tom Mitchell, director of marketing for Harmon/Kardon, a Northridge, Calif.-based manufacturer of audio components.

A CD player has "a very low-grade laser, in terms of its ability to cut or damage anything," he says. "About the worst-case scenario is that the beam would skip like a needle on a record and go to another part of the disc that you hadn't intended to play." And if a curious first-grader sticks a pencil into the CD tray area, nothing will happen.

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