Electricity – safe for all, everywhere
“SECURITY:
a balanced approach dealing with competing priorities and issues such as product function and performance, health and safety, and other regulatory requirements”
IEC Standardization
Management Board
Throughout the developed world electricity is taken for granted. It’s readily available and widely used for manufacturing, for transport, in hospitals, at work, at home and so on. Yet, how many times during the normal activities of a day does any one of us stop to question whether what we are doing might be dangerous, either for ourselves or for our entourage? The answer probably is rarely. This month, e-tech looks at the role of the IEC and International Standards in safety and protection both of users and the environment.
The notion of security is, in itself, not a standard concept. ISO/IEC Guide 51 which gives guidelines for including safety aspects in standards defines safety as being "freedom from unacceptable risk". Risk has a variable connotation which depends very much on the area in which it is exercised. For instance, a finance specialist will often take risks, sometimes to great advantage. But, in the case of electricity that option cannot exist. Risk taking is not permissible since electricity is fundamentally dangerous. The approach therefore is entirely different.
The notion of safety or protection should not be confused with that of dependability, the scope of IEC TC 56. This committee covers the generic aspects of reliability and maintainability programme management, together with risk analysis and project risk management.
Nor is the issue the same for societal security, the scope of ISO TC 223, which has a liaison with IEC TC 79 and is (provisionally) working towards international standardization that "provides protection from and response to disruptive challenges: risks of unintentionally, intentionally, and naturally caused crises and disasters that disrupt and have consequences on societal functions".
Security, as recently underlined by the IEC SMB (Standardization Management Board), needs to "emphasize the balanced approach ... in dealing with competing priorities and issues such as ... product function and performance, health and safety, and other regulatory requirements."
This issue of e-tech looks at some of the aspects linked to balancing these latter issues of health, safety and the environment and the ensuing regulatory needs:
- Conformity Assessment of electric medical equipment safety, now with FDA recognition
- IECEx certification of cordless caplamps for safer underground mining
- Safeguarding the environment – the role of the Advisory Committee on Environmental Aspects, ACEA
- Focusing on security and the Advisory Committee on Safety, ACOS
- The opportunities of hazards – an interview with Yoshiaki Ichikawa, Chairman of IEC TC 111: Environmental standardization for electrical and electronic products and systems
- Environmentally conscious design, ECD for electrical and electronic products and IEC 62430
- This year celebrates 50 years of lasers, source of many applications – the area of IEC TC 76
- Safety of temporary installations and the IEC 60364-7 series
- Three FDIS safety standards on man-machine interfaces; quick-connect terminations; transformers/power supply units for construction sites
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