I felt hoodwinked when it turned out when I'd designed in a class 1 (intrinsically safe, power limited) time-of-flight laser distance sensor and the purchasing department replaced it due to lack of availability for a 'superior' range class 2 (DO NOT STARE INTO BEAM for more than 0.25 seconds, intentionally suppressing your blink reflex can cause damage) sensor. Flags went up, every stakeholder was pulled in, we redid the risk assessment (aware of the temptation to fudge it to ship the equipment on time) and eventually allowed it after replacing a clear anodized part with a black anodized one and festooning the machine with "Do not stare into laser" stickers.

My roommate in college was a stagehand, we talked a bit about the safety and it appears the consideration is more on the scale of "We try not to shine the lasers in people's eyes" and less like "We have redundant, proven processes that ensure people cannot be harmed."

It feels like they've missed an important distinction between what's acceptable for your own purposes and what's acceptable risk to impose on someone else. Safety when messing about in your own backyard would often not pass OSHA requirements, that makes sense because it's your own risk and your own reward, this is ethically different an industrial scenario where you're forcing someone who's just trying to feed their family to endanger their eyes for someone else's profitability, similarly, concertgoers should and do assume that entertainment light shows are safe, while [some in] the entertainment industry take it much more casually.