We are almost midway through summer. Our June ASTM F23 Committee meeting in Reno is complete. Fourth of July celebrations and fireworks are over and we are waiting out the hot, hazy and humid days ahead in August and possible hurricanes too. While it is time to relax, it also time to keep you up to date on ASTM F23 Committee’s activities that occurred in Reno.
Although I did not attend the meeting, the meeting minutes have gradually been submitted for review and comment. Reno was an exciting place to have the June meeting, since it was reasonably inexpensive, had good food and plenty of other activities too. On a more serious side the committee did address some new activities and initiatives. The first was an administrative ballot proposal regarding the transfer of voting rights for producer representatives. The ballot received four negatives and after considerable discussion was withdrawn primarily because it is in conflict with ASTM’s Organizational Membership concept. The second item discussed was scheduling changes for the Main committee meeting. It was agreed to have Main committee meetings on Wednesday nights proceeded by Awards recognition at the June meetings in the future. The third and most substantial new business initiative, was to expand the F23 Scope and change the committee Title to “Personal Protective Clothing and Equipment”. This committee will focus on developing standard specifications, test methods, practices, guides, terminology, and classifications for material, clothing and PPE. The intent of this initiative is to broaden member involvement and participation in other ASTM committees and subcommittees. Along with this, an attempt will be made to coordinate and effectively integrate the F23 meeting schedule with E54 and D13. This should help to minimize conflicts and develop synergy within these committees. The final activity was to present service awards to members for their contributions to standards development over the past several years. The next committee meeting is scheduled in New Orleans in February 2006.
Other developments taking place in the last month include an update to the standard 16 mil neoprene reference material used for permeation testing quality control. The updated permeation rate is now reported as 245 ug/cm2/min on the Certificate issued from Pesce Lab Sales with the sample. This rate was taken from the summary of test data (Table 1) reported for F739-99a on page 1307 in the Annual Book of ASTM Standards 2004. Requests for this certificate should be sent to Pesce Lab Sales. Those customers ordering the material will receive a certificate with it. That is it for now, so enjoy your summer vacation. Be safe and have fun.