Readers may be interested to know that the IEC committee responsible for IEC60335 have proposed an addition to section 19 of IEC60335-1 which will incorporate EMC performance tests into the standard for the first time.
For those not completely familiar it, IEC60335-1 is the general requirement for household appliances and section 19 is the abnormal operating conditions section which is intended to ensure a product cannot catch fire, explode or otherwise malfunction in a dangerous way when subjected to forseeable abuse. Providing, as it does the basis, for the LVD harmonised standard EN60335 as well as other standards used in almost every other part of the world for electrical safety of household and small commercial appliances, this standard probably affects more equipment used in more homes worldwide than any other single safety standard. The newly proposed clauses are all intended to test the immunity of the product to EMC conditions to ensure that appliances which contain electronic controls do not become dangerous if the operation of those controls is disturbed by EMC related phenomena. For those interested in the details, the draft for public comment, reference number 98/264884DC, is available from the BSI. Outside the UK, if you want to contact your local standard supplier, the IEC committee draft number is 61/1547/CD. (Note - the last date for comments has now passed for the BS consultative document, and presumably for the IEC draft as well.) I should stress that this proposal relates to the IEC standard. Presumably, national/harmonised implementations of the standard in places where there are already EMC immunity provisions (EU and Australia/NZ etc.) will not need to implement this additional set of requirements. Others better qualified than I on this aspect may like to comment. Nick. --------- This message is coming from the emc-pstc discussion list. To cancel your subscription, send mail to [email protected] with the single line: "unsubscribe emc-pstc" (without the quotes). For help, send mail to [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], or [email protected] (the list administrators).
