James A. Thomas is president of the American Society for Testing
and Materials (ASTM), a private-sector organization.
Lawrence D. Eicher is secretary-general and CEO of the
International Organization for Standardization (ISO), an organization
controlled by official representatives of national governments. Lawrence
is a US citizen and a former director of the Office of Engineering Standards
at the National Bureau of Standard (now NIST).
James and Lawrence are debating Technical Barriers to Trade (TBT)
in relation to the World Trade Organization (WTO) and to activities of
Standards Development Organizations (SDOs) in Standardization News, an
ASTM publication. See issues for 2000 August and for 2000 October.
In the October issue, page 26, Lawrence makes a highly significant
comment: "Maybe someday the global pressures to 'go metric' would come
back to the U.S. SDOs vi WTO/TBT, but I expect the business world will
have solved such problems in other ways, or that all of us will be out of
the picture before then."
My personal opinion is that many of ASTM standards are rejected by
the ISO because they are based on non-SI units, rather than because of
differences in the adoption procedures of the ASTM (and ANSI) versus those
of the ISO, as James would have us believe.
For example, the R numbers in the U.S. for the thermal resistance
of insulation materials are generated by thickness in inches and area in
square feet, making U.S. R values not acceptable as ISO standards.
There are many other examples of ASTM standards which are not based on SI,
and which are, therefore, not acceptable to ISO member nations.
Gene.
