JA2013 - CO Detectors

The primary focus of the activity has been developing best practices and exchanging experience with carrying out market surveillance. The principal objective of the activity is to help to ensure that the products available on the EU market for consumers are safe and carry the appropriate warnings and instructions. The following 7 Member States are participating in the CO and smoke detectors activity: Austria, Germany, Ireland, Lithuania, the Netherlands, Portugal, and Slovenia.

Carbon monoxide detectors or CO detectors are devices that detect the presence of carbon monoxide (CO) gas in order to prevent carbon monoxide poisoning. CO detectors are designed to measure CO levels and activate an alarm before dangerous levels of CO are reached, giving people adequate warning to safely ventilate the area or evacuate. Some CO detectors also alert a monitoring service for emergency intervention.

The CO detector is the kind of a product that might be forgotten in markets surveillance plans since they are not dangerous per se. But if such a product is not sufficiently sensitive or if the instructions for use and maintenance are not suitable or sufficient to guarantee that the user takes due care, the failure to detect commonly occurring non acceptable concentrations of CO does not permit the user and others around them to take the measures necessary to avoid the risk of heavy consequences due to inhalation of CO or spread of smoke and fire.

The initial proposal was covering both CO and smoke detectors, however, during the project meetings, it has become clear that CO and Smoke detectors are so different products that they need to be addressed separately. The technologies they employ, the standards relating to them and the tests to which they have to be subjected to are all entirely different. This means that the testing programs are also completely different.

Moreover we have found that the cost of testing is considerable and above the available budget. As a result the detectors activity under JA2012 has restricted itself to testing CO detectors. In return, PROSAFE included in the JA2013 an Activity on smoke detectors to enable the working group to continue their work and address this type of products.

Final Technical Report
Please click on the picture to download a copy of the final technical report. The report gives an overview of the activities done throughout this particular project, highlighting not only the test results but also the recommendations and conclusions which can be found at the end of this report.

JA2012 - Smoke Detectors

This product specific activity will allow the development of best practices and the exchange experience with carrying out market surveillance on smoke detectors (excluding those that form part of a fixed system). Moreover the primary objective is to detect and test faulty or insufficiently sensitive products on the marketplace. This work will be able to draw on some of the experience from the on-going CO detectors activity under JA2012.

Smoke detectors are vital safety equipment. Smoke alarms are used to protect persons and properties from smoke intoxication or from fires, while persons are asleep, because these products detect the smoke generated by flaming or fires. There are two types of smoke alarms commonly used: ionisation type and photoelectric type. It is a kind of product that might be forgotten in market surveillance plans, since they are not dangerous per se. But if such a product is not sufficiently sensitive or if the instructions for use and maintenance are not suitable or sufficient to guarantee that the user takes due care, the failure to detect commonly occurring smoke does not permit the user and others around him/her to take the measures necessary to avoid the risk associated with the spread of smoke and fire.

The participants from Austria (Leader), Belgium, the Czech Republic, Latvia, Lithuania, Malta, the Netherlands, Portugal will carry out coordinated market surveillance in their national markets.

This work will be closely coordinated with the CEN groups working on standards concerning smoke detectors. The Joint Action will support the work with the definition and checking of the test methods, the reproducibility of the tests, etc.