Background to Standards and Regulations
Gas cylinders of all types are covered by comprehensive set of standards and regulations at national, regional and the international level.
Standards cover the design, operation and periodic inspection of gas cylinders both stationary and transportable cylinders. Today most standards are either regional, for example European, (EN) or International, (ISO. More details can be found on the standards section of the website.
Many regulations incorporate standards into regulations for transport of gas cylinders by road, rail, air, sea and inland waterways. An overview of the regulatory framework can be found on the regulatory page of the website.
ECMA and its Members have been and continue to be active in the development of standards and regulations and are recognised as experts in these areas.
Standards
Gas cylinder standards are critical for the safety of gas cylinders. They have evolved over many years into a comprehensive set of standards covering both transportable and static applications. ECMA members are proud to have been and continue to be part of the process of standardisation.
Standards – A quick history
There are more complete histories of standardisation available, however, briefly at the beginning of the twentieth century national standards bodies were established, the first being in 1901 which was the British Standards Institution. Other countries quickly followed. Whilst there were national standards for many items including gas cylinders there were no international standards. This changed in 1947 with the formation of the International Organization for Standardization, ISO. This initially consisted of 65 countries and has now grown to 167 members.
In 1961 European Committee for Standardization, CEN, was established for specific European Standards.
Whilst there were CEN and ISO standards, there were a number of areas where there was overlap and this resulted in The Vienna Agreement which was signed by CEN and ISO in 1991 but came in force in the mid-2000s. Its objective is to avoid duplication of potentially conflicting standards between CEN and ISO. This has resulted for the world of gas cylinders (and accessories of gas cylinders such as valves) of EN ISO standards. These standards are increasingly used around the world which is giving many benefits.
Gas cylinder standards
Standards for transportable gas cylinders are broken down into three areas, construction, use and retest. The management of standards at the European, CEN and International, ISO, are managed by two committees.
The European Committee is CEN/TC23 Transportable Gas Cylinders and the International Standards Committee is ISO/TC58 Gas Cylinders.
For more information on CEN/TC23 and ISO/TC58 and the standards they have published visit their websites.
Regulations
Over the past 150 years there has been progress at national and international levels to develop standards and regulations for gas cylinders. This ensures that users of gas cylinders can be confident that they have safe and efficient gas cylinders.
Much of the development of the standards and regulations have had significant input from ECMA Members.