Leveraging Your NSF Certification: Now that you've received NSF Certification ... why not leverage the Mark to your advantage.
NSF/ANSI Standard 60: Drinking Water Treatment Chemicals -- Health Effects and NSF/ANSI Standard 61: Drinking Water System Components -- Health Effects are both American National Standards, which means that the NSF Standards and the processes used to develop them conform to ANSI's requirements for voluntary consensus standards. The standards are copyrighted, but may be used by any organization or individual for the purpose of product/material evaluation, testing, and certification.
NSF/ANSI Standard 60, first adopted by the NSF Board of Trustees on October 7, 1988, covers corrosion and scale control chemicals; pH adjustment, softening, precipitation, and sequestering chemicals; coagulation and flocculation chemicals; well-drilling products; disinfection and oxidation chemicals; and miscellaneous and specialty chemicals for treatment of drinking water. The standard addresses the health effects implications of treatment chemicals and related impurities. Both the treatment chemical and the related impurities are considered contaminants for evaluation purposes. The two principal questions addressed are:
Reaction by-products such as the disinfection by-products of chlorine, ozone, hydrogen peroxide, or other chemicals are not covered by this scope of the standard.
NSF/ANSI Standard 61, also adopted on October 7, 1988, covers indirect additives products and materials, including process media, protective materials, joining and sealing materials, pipes and related products, mechanical devices, and mechanical plumbing devices (including faucets). In essence, every material from the well or water intakes through to the faucet are covered.
NSF/ANSI Standard 61 addresses crucial aspects of drinking water system components: whether contaminants that leach or migrate from the product/material into the drinking water are above acceptable levels in finished waters.
The standard also covers products, components and materials. When a material is certified under Standard 61, its certification indicates use restrictions on parameters such as maximum use temperature or surface area to volume ratio when the material is used in a finished product. This option allows manufacturers using certified materials to bypass some or all chemical testing when seeking certification, and assures that finished products meet all requirements.
For more information on NSF/ANSI Standard 61, please view the NSF/ANSI Standard 61 Overview.
As a complementary service to NSF's testing and certification to NSF/ANSI Standards 60 and 61, NSF also offers performance testing and certification for drinking water treatment and other equipment used in public drinking water distribution. Visit the NSF Public Drinking Water Equipment Performance webpage for more information.