What is ASTM?
In need of support, ASTM International
Committee D-01 continues to work on behalf
of the paint and coatings industry.
BY JIM BERRY
ENVIRONMENTAL CONSULTANT
During a social event at this year’s
35th Annual International
Waterborne, High-Solids and
Powder Coatings Symposium held in
New Orleans at the end of January, a
small group of people with several
decades of experience within the broader
coatings industry discussed common
interests. In response to the inquiry,
“What is ASTM?” one respondent—a
former president of FSCT—thought
ASTM was part of the U.S. Commerce
Department. Another individual—the
manager of a pigments and additives
supplier—thought ASTM was part of the
Bureau of Standards.
The two responses confirmed conclusions from similar conversations
over the past several years. Clearly,
many within the paint and coatings
industry use ASTM standards in a
multitude of ways including purchasing, manufacturing and marketing
with no understanding of their origin.
Others believe ASTM standards to
have been developed by a benevolent
but unknown third party. This is far
from reality; each industry is responsible for developing its own ASTM
test methods.
The American Society for Testing
Materials (ASTM), formed over a century ago, is a non-profit, consensus
organization whose test methods
have since been used by scores of
industries and thousands of companies across the U.S. Over the decades,
its reputation spread abroad as did
the use of its test methods. In
response to the dramatic increase in
their global use, in 2001 it changed
its name to ASTM International.
Today, ASTM continues as a small,
independent non-profit organization
with approximately 150 employees,
few of which are technically trained.
As perhaps the ultimate “bottoms up”
organization, it uses free labor to
write test methods, which it then
adopts and markets. Its employees
administratively oversee the activities of more than 30,000 industry volunteers, or ASTM members, who may
labor in any of ASTM’s more than 130
technical committees.
Only a small portion of the 30,000
volunteers attend meetings, typically
semi-annually, where the 12,000 current ASTM test methods or standards
are maintained, reapproved or new
methods are written for items of commerce as diverse as wood products and
the nuclear fuel cycle. ASTM oversight
ensures that all decisions are made
via an unprejudiced ASTM protocol
that makes certain that products
which it will endorse are developed
through consensus. The protocol
makes certain that: a) all parties to a
method have equal voice and b) disagreements are resolved without bias
that would favor any manufacturer,
buyer or third party.
Standards, protocols and test methods of primary interest to the coatings
community are the province of
Committee D-01, Paint and Related
Coatings, Materials and Applications,
which celebrated its 100th Anniversary
in June of 2002. Committee D-01 and
its more than 50 subcommittees, including Industrial Protective Coatings,
Physical Properties of Applied Paint
Films and Chemical Analysis of Paints
and Paint Materials, oversee more than
600 test methods and protocols for the
paint and coatings industry. As is true
of all ASTM products, each must be
reviewed and re-approved at least every
five years. Without re-approval, ASTM
withdraws a standard or test method at
the end of the eighth year.
In summary, ASTM protocols and
test methods for coatings, polymers
and many raw materials are prepared not by its employees, as would
be the case within the Commerce
Department or the Bureau of
Standards, but rather by approximately 140 volunteers who gather
twice annually under the oversight of
an ASTM employee, or the staff manager. The staff manager contracts for
the conference site, provides administrative support during the meeting
and ensures that ASTM protocols are
followed as the Committee reapproves existing ASTM documents or
develops new ones.
For most of the last century, employers urged and selected employees to
attend ASTM meetings to ensure that
the company’s interests were well represented during development of products such as analytical methods or
other guidelines. This seems a much
less frequent occurrence during the
last couple of decades, perhaps
because the new generation of management is unaware either of the
importance of ASTM to their bottom
lines or how totally dependant ASTM
is on the expertise of career industry
