Federal Standard 209 Shelved, ISO Reigns

By Mark A. DeSorbo

December 12, 2001 — Federal Standard 209, a benchmark the contamination control industry lived and died by for more than 40 years, has been officially cancelled, paving the way for worldwide harmonization promised by new cleanroom protocols from the International Organization for Standardization (ISO).

@text:The cancellation comes less than a year after the Institute of Environmental Sciences and Technology (IEST; Mount Prospect, IL) submitted a request to the U.S. General Services Administration (GSA) to retire the federal standard and eliminate a potential economic disadvantage the United States would have had for maintaining one cleanroom standard too many.

?It was an American document, and that was the problem,? says Al Lieberman, a member of the ISO/TC 209 committee and one of the original authors for Fed-Std 209. ?If it is a document from another country, people will be unhappy with it.?

See the complete news story in the January, 2002, issue of CleanRooms Magazine

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