Standards fulfil a crucial role in firefighter protection, establishing minimum performance criteria and ensuring that products are safe and fit for purpose in line with regulations. PPE manufacturers invest significantly in testing all their products and designs to ensure that they meet the applicable standards before they submit them in tenders. While everything submitted is almost always compliant, there are implications beyond the standards that procurement teams should consider. Standard testing procedures have been in place for many years, but we know that there can be as much as 40 per cent variation (for certain tests) between the independent laboratories where products and garments are certified. A sample can pass on one machine and fail on another in a different country. The testing machines also continue to evolve. For example, the early versions of the sweating guarded hotplate, which is the standardised test used to assess breathability, were the size of a small kitchen. Today, these machines are no bigger than a set of ordinary "retail" scales.
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