Mark A. DeSorbo
MOUNT PROSPECT, IL—THE American National Standards Institute (ANSI; Washington, DC) has awarded the Institute of Environmental Sciences and Technology (IEST) accreditation, further empowering the volunteer organization as a standards-writing body.
 Mielke: Exciting times for IEST |
“These are exciting times for IEST, and this certainly puts us in the forefront when it comes to cleanroom standards,” says Robert Mielke, the IEST's contamination control technical vice president. “It's a great time for the contamination control arena, too, with the IEST being able to write ANSI standards and being the secretariat for the ISO/TC 209. Those two aspects go hand-in-hand.”
ANSI accreditation, Mielke says, has been a longtime goal of the IEST, adding that strict criteria had to be met for accreditation. Although he did not want to speculate, Mielke did say the ISO 14644-1, Cleanrooms and associated controlled environments-Part 1: Classification of air cleanliness, will most likely be the first document that the IEST will submit for American National Standard consideration.
“There are certain steps that must be taken prior to submitting it,” Mielke cautions, “and not all of our recommended practices will be submitted to ANSI to become standards.”
Documents that are submitted will be subjected to a canvas method, a public review process that allows any interested party to express an opinion and to refute verbiage of the document. The process also mandates that the documents will be balanced and not swayed by any interest category.
“ANSI accreditation dots the Is and crosses the Ts—it's the icing on the cake,” says Robert Spector, IEST president-elect. “This is a volunteer organization and only people in the industries served had an interest in developing standards. Now, [accreditation] opens us up to more industries and raises awareness of what we do.”