Brent - 60601-1-1 has a requirement for use of an equipotential bonding terminal when the equipment is either Category AP Equipment or Category APG Equipment. These equipment types are related to flammable mixtures that are used for gaseous anesthetics and the requirement is intended to reduce the likelihood of ESD as a source of ignition. There is no exception stated for battery powered equipment and neither should there be, since many anesthetic gases are incredibly flammable and some are self oxidizing.
If the product in question is Category AP Equipment or Category APG Equipment, the concern is legitimate. If not, it may relate more to the specific use environment in that particular hospital. For a reference, see the MSDS for cyclopropane http://www.matheson-trigas.com/msds/MAT06080.pdf One line from this MSDS is enough to give pause: "Electrostatic discharges may be generated by flow or agitation resulting in ignition or explosion." eek! Regards, Peter L. Tarver, PE Product Safety Manager Sanmina-SCI Homologation Services San Jose, CA [email protected] > From: [email protected] > Sent: Friday, June 27, 2003 12:26 PM > > I got some weird "feedback" from one of our sales > people in the Czech > republic. One of the local folks said they were > concerned that a metal > cased piece of medical electrical equipment > didn't have a separate ground > for when it was used on internal batteries. I'm > an EMC guy so I was > wondering if any of the safety experts out there > could tell me if this > makes any sense from a regulatory standpoint. > > Thanks! > > Brent DeWitt > This message is from the IEEE EMC Society Product Safety Technical Committee emc-pstc discussion list. Visit our web site at: http://www.ewh.ieee.org/soc/emcs/pstc/ To cancel your subscription, send mail to: [email protected] with the single line: unsubscribe emc-pstc For help, send mail to the list administrators: Ron Pickard: [email protected] Dave Heald: [email protected] For policy questions, send mail to: Richard Nute: [email protected] Jim Bacher: [email protected] Archive is being moved, we will announce when it is back on-line. All emc-pstc postings are archived and searchable on the web at: http://www.ieeecommunities.org/emc-pstc
