John et al, I closed dBi Corporation in September 2013 and retired. So I haven't bothered keeping up with all of the niggling details of electromagnetic compatibility (EMC), electromagnetic interference (EMI), and electrostatic discharge (ESD) standards as they have evolved since then.
But from early 2002 to late 2013 I personally did the official EMC/EMI/ESD approval tests of 389 products to a wide variety of US, Canadian, European Union, Australian, New Zealand, and Japanese standards (see my web site, http://www.dbicorporation.com/). As a working EMC Engineer, I observed that many countries/market areas had EMI and ESD requirements for military and medical products/ equipment-- because these could kill or severely injure people if they misbehaved due to EMI/ESD problems. But with the exception of the European Union-- and India for products with fax capability-- I don't recall any legal EMI/ESD standards or requirements for commercial products and equipment. I was told that governments regulate EMC because the product that fails is not the product/equipment that causes the problem-- thus the wrong party gets the blame, and the culprit gets off scot-free. But most governments consider EMI and ESD problems to be self-correcting: 1. If a company makes a product that is very susceptible to EMI or ESD, there will be many problems with it in the field. 2. If the manufacturer or seller can't/doesn't resolve these problems, unhappy customers will complain to anyone who will listen-- severely damaging the manufacturer's reputation. 3. Prospective buyers will look for alternatives, and be leery of buying/leasing *any* products made by the manufacturer. 4. Distributors and sellers will stop carrying the manufacturer's products. 5. The manufacturer will eventually go out of business-- solving the problem without government intervention/interference! Somewhere I heard/read that the European Union (EU) got into the regulating of EMI and ESD susceptibility because of the Treaty of Maastricht-- one of the major founding treaties of the European Union. This treaty allowed countries (states) in the EU to pass legislation to protect the "health and welfare" of their people-- and some countries, such as Germany, made a very-broad interpretation of "health and welfare". For example, Don Bush told me that in the 1970's, if you wanted to buy a television in Germany, that the PTT (Postal, Telegraph and Telephone) authority would send someone to your house to make signal-strength measurements-- and they would specify: * The type of television antenna you had to buy, * Where to mount the antenna, AND * In which direction to aim the antenna, to *guarantee* that you had an acceptable level of television reception! Therefore the EU started developing its market-wide EMI/ESD standards, to preempt these countries from making standards/requirements that could become barriers to free trade inside the EU. I worked at IBM and Lexmark from 1977 to early 2002, and both companies had internal standards for EMC/EMI/ESD that were frequently much tougher than the legally-mandated standards-- out of self-interest: * To keep our customers satisfied. * To maintain our reputation for building/supporting high-quality products. I don't know if it is still there, but there used to be a large map of the US posted in IBM/Lexmark's Conducted Emissions lab, with map pins showing all the places where EMC-Lab folks had gone to investigate field problems. John Barnes KS4GL, PE, NCE, NCT, ESDC Eng, ESDC Tech, PSE, Master EMC Design Eng, SM IEEE (retired) Lexington, KY http://www.dbicorporation.com/ - ---------------------------------------------------------------- This message is from the IEEE Product Safety Engineering Society emc-pstc discussion list. To post a message to the list, send your e-mail to <[email protected]> All emc-pstc postings are archived and searchable on the web at: http://www.ieee-pses.org/emc-pstc.html Attachments are not permitted but the IEEE PSES Online Communities site at http://product-compliance.oc.ieee.org/ can be used for graphics (in well-used formats), large files, etc. Website: http://www.ieee-pses.org/ Instructions: http://www.ieee-pses.org/list.html (including how to unsubscribe) List rules: http://www.ieee-pses.org/listrules.html For help, send mail to the list administrators: Scott Douglas <[email protected]> Mike Cantwell <[email protected]> For policy questions, send mail to: Jim Bacher: <[email protected]> David Heald: <[email protected]>
