ASTM International

Standard Guide for Conformity Assessment of Personal Protective Clothing and Equipment
 N F3050

Annotation

This guide describes options for conformity assessment (CA) requirements relating to personal protective clothing and equipment (hereafter referred to as “PPE”). This guidance can optionally be used to define conformity assessment requirements in a PPE specification standard or in a companion ASTM conformity assessment Standard Practice document2 associated with the PPE specification standard. It is understood that the former approach is not consistent with ISO Directive, Part 2, Section 6.7.

This guide is not intended to require additional conformity assessment requirements to any PPE specification standard or to the integral components of the PPE.

This guide defines conformity assessment principles and requirement options consistent with U.S. HHS NIOSH National Framework for Personal Protective Equipment – Conformity Assessment Infrastructure as a means to manage the risks to wearers to defined hazards from nonconforming PPE.

This guide identifies potential hazard and risk assessment outcomes for which a conformity assessment scheme (commonly referred to as a “program”) can be developed to manage assessed risks.

It is not the intent of this guide to prescribe any particular model of conformity assessment requirements for PPE or its integral components.

The requirements and activities in a given conformity assessment scheme should be determined by a conformity assessment scheme owner or can be defined by the PPE specification standard writers, and should be based, at a minimum, on the criteria contained in Section 6 of this guide.

This guide is not intended to supersede any federal, state, or local laws or regulations.