Electrical Safety Standards

Standards are a proven and effective method to assure the performance, reliability, and safety of electrical equipment. Standards not only include the safety criteria, but may also consider just a portion of the criteria in a standard designed to test the efficacy of a specific category of equipment. Standards may also be used to identify a safe operating procedure, a method of measurement, the quality of a product, and a method of manufacture. The need for such standards arose because of the benefits derived from the division of labor in the manufacture of goods that began in the eighteenth century. Worker specialization, capital, and an administrative hierarchy were evolved to take advantage of the division of labor concept. Modern industrialized countries expanded these early activities into a very complex and sophisticated way of providing goods and services. These complexities and specializations require a method of communicating the years of education and experience of one group of experts to other specialists or to ordinary laymen. For example, standards provide a mechanism wherein the consensus of safety experts can be easily communicated to equipment designers or operators. Large organizations or groups have evolved that are almost exclusively devoted to standards, such as Underwriter Laboratories (UL) and the American National Standards Institute (ANSI), as well as subsections of professional organizations, such as the Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers (IEEE) and the American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME). For example, as reported in 1980, more than 400 private organizations, consisting of trade, technical, professional, consumer, and labor groups, had written or sponsored more than 20,000 commercial standards.IJ As a consequence, the application of electrical safety standards, especially in the context of related education, training, operational procedures, incident reporting, and compliance activities, has significantly reduced electrical hazards. Yet despite this success, electrical shock injuries and deaths still persist. This report, therefore, focuses on the role of electrical safety standards to mitigate or reduce such hazards. An underlying impediment to improving electrical safety standards is a lack of knowledge, understanding, or agreement as to what constitutes a safe exposure of humans to electrical shocks. Also of interest at this symposium is the identification of exposure levels that may cause some harm, but are not too severe so as to preclude effective postshock treatment. Time-consuming effort is also needed. Reasonable agreement among experts and interested parties must be obtained. Often, approved experimental procedures must