The conformity of electrical products does not concern only safety, but also that the products work properly with other devices in their intended operating environment. Accordingly, products shall comply with the Electromagnetic Compatibility (EMC) Directive.
“In practice, devices must not only interfere with each other too much but they must also tolerate a certain amount of outside interference without their functions being disrupted. While EMC does not principally involve safety, some devices may begin to function dangerously if the interference level is too high,” explains Chief Safety Engineer Hannu Mattila of Tukes.
Co-operation among European authorities is needed to ensure that common rules are used for the conformity assessment in different countries.
“Joint meetings and projects aim at harmonising the surveillance practices across Europe and ensuring equal competition conditions for the entrepreneurs. The work is important particularly for the new member states and for the candidate countries, which are also taken into the co-operation. Joint projects also aim to raise the level of surveillance in those existing member states, which otherwise have only minor resources to be allocated for the surveillance,” says Mattila.
Joint surveillance projects have revealed deficiencies
The current project is the fourth joint European market surveillance campaign by now. This time, special efforts are focused on LED lighting products. For the campaign, hundreds of products are tested in different countries to find out whether they comply with the requirements of the EMC Directive. The project results will be completed in autumn 2011.
The first joint campaign was launched in 2004 and focused on low-energy light bulbs. The following campaigns evaluated the compliance of hand-held electric tools and DVD and Blu-ray players on the market.
“Looking at the project results, we still have a long way to go to achieve good electromagnetic compatibility and non-interfering operation of devices,” Mattila says.
Further information:
Hannu Mattila, Chief Safety Engineer, tel. +358 10 605 2103
Hanna Mustonen, Senior Safety Engineer, tel. +358 10 605 2569
firstname.lastname@tukes.fi
The Finnish Safety and Chemicals Agency (Tukes) protects people, property and the environment from safety risks. We promote the technical safety and conformity within several branches in Finland, including the consumer safety and chemicals. We supervise products, services and production systems, and enforce the relevant legislation. Our main offices based in Helsinki and Tampere, we have a payroll strength of 200.