What`s New With ASTM?

According to Paul Roman, chair of ASTM’s Committee F30 on EMS, ASTM’s National Voluntary Consensus Standards cover a wide area, ranging from construction, design and performance of ambulances and airway products to latex gloves and protective clothing.

“Some things are part of our committee, but others are part of F29, which covers anesthesia and respiratory products,” he says. “Those products, which are manufactured to ASTM standards, have actually been adopted by the International Standards Organization (ISO), so they’re international now.”

In the past few months, there has been one significant development.

“After reviewing the government specifications popularly known as the KKK-A-1822 Version E and comparing them with ASTM F1220, which is a national voluntary consensus standard document written as a performance standard with some specification to it, the Ambulance Manufacturing Division (AMD)—the people who build ambulances—decided to continue to support the KKK specification,” explains Roman. “This is not to totally exclude the ASTM document. They note that it does exist; they know some people may use it as a document in writing a purchase request or as a reference. They acknowledge there are some good things in our document that are not in the KKK, but they feel more comfortable with how some parts of the KKK are written.”

In the end, says Roman, the one overriding issue for AMD is the fact that ASTM does not have a technical expert on payroll to solve day-to-day issues.

“ASTMs believe the General Services Administration (GSA) [which writes the KKK specification] should stop trying to spend federal money to write a document that already exists, and, eventually, the K document as a specification and the ASTM standard as a voluntary consensus document should be rolled into one document. GSA could adopt it and continue to be the subject experts, but ASTM will be the process that continues to update the document to comply with the law. We’re continuing to work with the manufacturers. Many of them are ASTM members who participate in our documents, so they haven’t completely walked away from us.”

—MN