New safety footwear standards published

New European and International standards relating to safety and occupational footwear have been recently published. EN ISO 20344:2011 and EN ISO 20345:2011 are the latest revisions of the well established 203244 series of footwear standards, with EN ISO 20344 providing generic test methods and EN ISO 20345 detailing performance requirements for safety footwear incorporating 200J toe caps. EN ISO 20347 for occupational footwear without protective toecaps has also been revised, and the 2012 version of the standard is now available.

The standards were revised as part of a routine five-year review. While many of the changes are of an editorial nature or provide additional clarification, EN ISO 20344:2011 includes revised test methods for addressing penetration-resistant insert performance for both steel and textile materials.

Although EN ISO 20345:2011 is available now, there is a transition period up to 30th June 2013, during which EN ISO 20345:2004 will retain the European ‘presumption of conformity’. After this date, the presumption of conformity will be transferred to EN ISO 20345:2011.

This is a change to the original decision, whereby the presumption would have been moved before manufacturers had time to introduce new products to the market. A corrigendum to this effect has been published in the European Union Official Journal (OJEU). However, the European Commission has pointed out that the issue is not yet closed, as the request to sell stocks in conformity to the previous version of the standard after that date is still to be discussed.

SATRA is already working with a number of safety footwear manufacturers to update their products to the latest standards, and strongly urges all manufacturers to work towards the latest versions prior to 30th June 2013.

Publishing Data

This article was originally published on page 3 of the September 2012 issue of SATRA Bulletin.

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