A vote concerning updates to the IEC 62321 standards was concluded on May 3, 2013. The 2013 edition of IEC 62321-1 to -5 unanimously passed the Final Draft International Standard (FDIS) stage and is now in the Publications Being Printed (BPUB) phase. The results of the vote were posted on the IEC website and a publication date is expected to be June 30, 2013 with the exception of IEC 62321-1 which was already published in May 2013. IEC 62321 - Determination of Certain Substances in Electrotechnical Products The production, use and disposal of electro-technical products can have an impact on the environment, especially when certain chemical substances and compounds are being used in the manufacturing. The IEC 62321 standard on Determination of Certain Substances in Electrotechnical Products outlines methods for testing electro-technical products in order to determine the levels of chemical substances regulated by international legal frameworks like EU Restriction of Hazardous Substances (RoHS) or Administrative Measure on the Control of Pollution Caused by Electronic Information Products (EIPs) (so-called China RoHS). These substances currently include lead, mercury, cadmium, hexavalent chromium, and two types of brominated flame retardants, polybromidated biphenyls and polybrominated diphenyl ethers (PBB and PBDE). Standard Introduces New Testing Methods The standard was developed to ensure that tests are conducted in a consistent and reliable manner by laboratories all over the world, while following the same method specification in order to ensure compliance with the standard regulations. As usual in standardization the 2008 edition of standard IEC 62321 underwent a maintenance cycle in order to include best practices and technical progress in the procedures. Main changes from the 2008 edition of IEC 62321 to the 2013 edition include that the single document will be split in a family of standards. New test equipment like Combustion Ion Chromatography (C-IC) and Cold Vapour Atomic Fluorescence Spectrometry (CV-AFS) have been introduced and the sample preparation standard IEC/PAS 62596 has been included. An overview on the first set of IEC 62321 2013 edition standards which will be published soon is summarized in a Table within the latest SGS SafeGuards bulletin. Completing the set of standards mentioned in the table there are four additional standards in different draft stages under preparation to provide test methods for PBB/PBDE (IEC 62321-6), hexavalent chromium (IEC 62321-7-1 and -2) and phthalates (IEC 62321-8). It is expected that those standards will be published sequentially once they have received the positive voting of the national committees. Planned publication date for IEC 62321-6 is February 2014, IEC 62321-7-1 is expected in April 2014, IEC 62321-7-2 is expected in November 2014 and the last part IEC 62321-8 will be published most likely in March 2015. SGS Electrical and Electronics Services
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