The Institute of Environmental Sciences and Technology (IEST) announced that the American National Standards Institute (ANSI) has appointed them the administrator of the ANSI-accredited U.S. technical advisory group to the International Organization for Standardization Technical Committee 142 (ISO/TC 142). The committee is charged with overseeing cleaning equipment for air and other gases. ANSI is the official national standards body of the United States.

After a long period of inactivity, ISO/TC 142 was recently reactivated and met in Milan, Italy, to reorganize its activities. The Secretariat of the ISO/TC 142 is held by the UNI, the national standards organization of Italy. The committee determined that two working groups will develop standards, and six task groups will analyze specific areas of filtration and recommend a course of action.

The U.S., represented by IEST, was appointed convener of ISO/TC 142 Working Group 4, HEPA and ULPA filters. The objective of Working Group 4 is to prepare a set of ISO standards in order to assess the performance of high-efficiency particulate air (HEPA) and ultra-low penetration air (ULPA) filters by means of internationally recognized test methods. R. Vijayakumar, Ph.D., a Senior Member of IEST, will chair the working group.

IEST will host an informational seminar regarding its new venture on Wednesday, May 10 at ESTECH 2006, the 52nd annual technical meeting and exposition of IEST, in Phoenix. Philip Winters will lead the seminar. Online registration and the advance program are now available at www.iest.org/estech/estech.htm.