Cary, NC -- (SBWIRE) -- 01/12/2010 -- Inspectors and Contractors are being forced to accept or install non-certified electrical equipment in our nation’s workplaces. Federal Law (OSHA) 29CFR1910.399 and 303a requires that electrical equipment be listed or labeled by an approved testing laboratory. Protection is available from MET.
The implications here are serious: Workers are exposed to hazardous and incorrectly designed equipment, workplace owners and managers are successfully sued by families, inspectors are blamed and contractors are sued for installing the equipment. Equipment manufacturers are then subject to lawsuits, but this is more difficult when they are outside of the US.
To help combat this threat to our electrical industry employees and the people and owners in our workplaces, MET has developed the “Non-Certified Equipment Record Book”. This record book is now available free of charge, and allows electrical industry professionals like Inspectors and Contractors to identify and record potentially hazardous non-certified equipment. It also contains language reviewed by an experienced construction attorney that makes it clear the person writing the record considers the equipment potentially hazardous. A (Carbonless) copy of this record can be given the owner of the equipment, as notice that there will be liability in the event of an injury, electrocution or explosion.
In the last few years, special interest groups and politicians have been working hard to cripple our existing safety requirements, and have purposefully ignored warning from our electrical safety experts. This effort to keep safety inspection costs down only increases liability for our hard working families and our business people who have invested greatly. One good way to keep and increase jobs is to keep people alive and safe, and keep businesses free of fire and explosion hazards. Many people will remember the West Pharmaceutical disaster in 2004, in which non-certified equipment caused an explosion that killed several people and destroyed the jobs and lives of many more.
The Non-Certified Record Book is available at no cost to contractors, inspectors, or anyone who is in a position to identify non-certified equipment. To order your record book, contact Luke Young at 800-321-4655, the MET Laboratories Southeast headquarters and testing facility in Cary, NC. The MET Southeast office has been in the Raleigh-Durham RTP area for over 17 years.
MET is a Nationally Recognized Testing Laboratory (NRTL), approved by OSHA to certify multiple product categories. For information on MET, go to www.osha.gov and select “N” from the alphabetical menu. You can then look at the OSHA scope of accreditation for MET Laboratories under the NRTL link.