safety

Functional safety encompasses various standards and requirements for ensuring safe product operation. Functional safety evaluations are necessary whenever controls are employed to ensure safe product operation, with the process generally similar across projects despite differing nuances in standards and applications.

Designing safe products powered by lithium-ion batteries requires an understanding of how the battery pack will behave while undergoing thermal runaway. In this work, fractional thermal runaway calorimetry is used to estimate the energy release from cells at different states of charge when undergoing a thermal runaway.

The Center for Devices and Radiological Health (CDRH) at the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has released its latest reports on the agency’s activities in support of the safety and innovation of medical devices.

Recalls can create huge problems for manufacturers and product sellers. They can generate new product liability lawsuits that are harder to defend, involve a significant financial cost to implement, and create reputational problems with consumers and retailers. Manufacturers must carefully design a recall or other corrective action that is as effective as possible and adequate under the circumstances. Various government entities are issuing new requirements that can help with these efforts.

ANSI Z535.4 is a standard developed by ANSI that relates specifically to product safety signs and labels.

Even though warnings and instructions are not followed by all product users, they are important for product safety and product liability defensibility. Manufacturers must decide how safe to design their products and when they can also rely on warnings and instructions to make the product safe.

The ANSI Z535.3 standard focuses solely on guidelines for the design and use of safety symbols.

In our "On Your Mark" columns, we often discuss the importance of American National...

The FAA has published requirements that require testing for all battery devices that are a part of the aircraft itself.

This column covers specifics on symbol use – one of the fundamental elements of your labels – and options for handling complexities you may be facing.