I'm afraid I don't understand many of the points in the article. It is a bit like what we call a seagull (it flies in, dumps a load of shit and flies away, leaving someone else to deal with the mess).
"National Association of State Fire Marshals is considering challenging UL's tax-exempt status because it believes UL is not fulfilling its public-service duty." What is the point here? ? To save tax money? ? To punish UL? ? To attract negative attention to UL and positive attention to NASFM? ? To increase UL's expenses or reduce its effectiveness? ? To increase reliance on industrial funding? With regard to the smoke detector problem, is UL also responsible for detecting fraud and deception on the part of the manufacturer? They are currently working on carelessness and neglect by manufacturers through their follow-up programs, but detection of fraud would be a major new and expensive expectation. Criticism was made of the standards for toasters and halogen lamps and the heavy industry involvement in their content. These are ANSI standards. These standards are open to public and especially consumer and government participation. At least in the ITE end of things, I see no interest from consumer or government groups in participating. Have the complaining institutions participated in the standards in question? Have their proposals been rejected or have they overlooked the problem until it needed to be addressed as did the standards? The biggest point was the funding of testing coming from industry. No alternatives were suggested. In fact, it seems there are no reasonable alternatives. The only ones I can think of are funding of UL, ETL, Factory Mutual, etc. from ? Out of the budgets of associations like NASM (probably hard on dues). ? Federal funding through taxes. Consider regulation of pesticides by FDA/EPA, or tobacco by BATF. In fact, a better example may be automobiles which (believe it or not) UL used to approve. Henry Ford, unwilling to live up to UL's demand that the gas tank could not be on the dashboard, abandoned UL and auto safety is now up to the Federal Government. Happy? Sean Oberle wrote: > Today's Washington Post ran a lengthy and prominent story (front page > above fold, plus two full pages inside) raising questions about the > safety of UL-tested products. I only scanned it, so don't know how > valid it is, but I thought members of this forum might find > interesting. It's on-line here. > > Sean Oberle > Vice President of New Products > Washington Business Information, Inc. > 1117 N 19th St, Ste 200, Arlington, VA 22209 > Voice: 703/247-3429; Fax: 703/247-3421 >
