The NFPA 70E Standard provides guidelines for electrical safety in the workplace. Recently this standard has been updated to provide consistency of terms with other standards that address hazards and risk.
Some of these changes introduced new terms such as arc flash risk assessment to replace arc flash analysis and shock risk assessment to replace shock hazard analysis.
Determining the Arc Flash Risk Assessment and Shock Risk Assessment for electrical devices provides important information to warn of the specific risks associated with an energized piece of equipment. This information is communicated to workers through the use of equipment labels.
In Section 130.5(D) of the 2015 NFPA 70E Standard new requirements for Arc Flash Warning Labels are explained.
Equipment labels must now include:
- Nominal system voltage
- Arc Flash boundary
- And at least one of the following:
- Incident energy and working distance, or Arc Flash PPE Category, but not both
- Minimum Arc Rating of clothing
- Site specific level of PPE
The use of HRC or Hazard Risk Categories is no longer used in the NFPA 70E standard.
Previous Equipment Labels would take this form:
Equipment Labels in compliance with the updated NFPA 70E would take this form:
The most notable change is that the Arc Flash Hazard Category is no longer listed on the label. Prohibited Approach Boundary is no longer used as well as the changes in the terminology for shock hazard.
The only exception to these new label requirements is to allow labels applied prior to September 30, 2011 to continue to be used if they have the available incidence energy or required PPE listed.
Per the standard, owners of equipment are responsible for documentation, installation, and maintenance of field marked labels.
Panduit has a complete solution to produce field or shop printed arc flash labels including the TDP43ME printer, Easy-Mark labeling software, and printable label supplies. For more information on our solutions please visit our website.
For more information on the requirement of the 2015 NFPA 70E go to the NFPA www.nfpa.org .
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