Conformity Magazine - January 2009 - (Page 16) Blum labored for several months pulling together and condensing research, and finding experts around the globe to author sections of what would eventually become a 46-page dissertation on fire data and the health, environmental, and recycling impacts of flame retardants use in plastics. This study was published as “The Case against Candle Resistant Electronics.”11 The Challenge IEC standards are international, and each IEC member country has a single vote. The ability to contact TC 108 national committees in each of the voting countries was therefore essential. With some ingenuity, the NGOs and their international networks were able to get Blum’s paper out to representatives in most of these countries. The NGOs had never before tried to impact an industry standard of this type or magnitude. Representatives of FoE, the CEH, ChemSec and ECOS worked to identify points of contact for each TC 108 National Committee, and then educated people on how to discuss these complex issues with the committee members. In the end, scientists, doctors, fire fighters, and a variety of NGOs in 30 separate countries petitioned their national committees for TC 108 to consider the human health and the global environmental consequences of the proposed candle flame ignition requirement. The Results With objective and compelling scientific, technical, and environmental arguments against the proposed candle flame ignition requirement in hand, and backed by an international coalition of scientists, physicians, firefighters, and environmental NGOs representing the public, enough of the TC 108 committee members voted against incorporation of the candle flame ignition requirement in each of the three proposed standards to defeat them. National standards based on these requirements in the U.S. and Canada (via UL and CSA) were also defeated. In fact, many comments requested that the section on candle ignition be removed in order to enable passage of a revised standard in a future vote. The Lessons There are a number of lessons to be learned from the successful effort to defeat the candle flame ignition requirement. First, environmental and health issues should be considered in the standards development processes. While the IEC has a policy that environmental impact of standards must be assessed, the capabilities of the technical committees to conduct this assessment can be inadequate. This is not the fault of the individuals on the committees or the IEC itself. But environmental impact is a specialty in and of itself, and there are few, if any, safety experts who are also supply chain and environmental experts. Second, the case of the candle flame ignition requirement is one in which both industry and the environmental community were on the same side. This need not be a unique situation. 1 Conformity JAnUAry 2009 The electronics industry can do a better job of understanding and improving the environmental impact and performance properties of its products, a job which can best be achieved in partnership with scientists and physicians, as well as health and environmental NGOs. Third, this story provides a dramatic example of how special interest groups can sometimes heavily influence the standards development process in pursuit of their own marketing objectives. The authors believe that better safeguards are required in the standards development process to provide effective checks and balances. Finally, the electronics industry should consider how similar situations have been resolved in other industries. In a separate situation in 2007, the CPSC decided to not move forward with an open flame standard for foam in furniture, based in part on health and environmental concerns about the fire retardant chemicals that would be likely to be used to meet the standard. CPSC Commissioner Thomas Moore said, “No one wants to trade fire risks for chemical toxicity risks.” Conclusion Safety is of paramount importance to the electronics industry. Trading off health and environmental safety is a bad bargain, especially in the face of a poorly documented fire safety risk and rising pressure on the industry to improve product environmental performance. Now more than ever, industry leaders need to be mindful that concerns about safety are extended to include the long-range public health and environmental effects of their products, and to ensure that the process of developing product standards mirrors those concerns. Michael Kirschner is the president of Design Chain Associates, and can be reached at mike@designchainassociates.com. Dr. Arlene Blum is executive director of the Green Science Policy Institute and a visiting scholar in chemistry at UC Berkeley. She holds a Ph.D. in biophysical chemistry and can be reached at arlene@greensciencepolicy.org. The authors would like to thank the scientists, physicians, firefighters, students, NGOs and representatives from the electronics industry from around the world who came together to provide information and support. Notes 1. “Draft Candle Fire Safety Analysis and Recommendations,” Consumer Product Safety Task Force of the NASFM, November 13, 2000. Hall, John R, “Fires involving appliance housings – is there a clear and present danger?,” Fire Technology 38, 2002, pp179-198. 2.
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