European norms for disinfection testing

Disinfectant standards are required for several reasons. Primarily any company which wishes to market a new product in the European Union will need to apply a mark (known as a CE mark) which confirms that the product conforms to an accepted standard of quality. The mark has no official meaning as an abbreviation but probably originally stood for Conformite Europeenne. One of the simplest routes to being able to justify the CE mark is for the manufacturer to test the product against a defined European Standard. Assuming the product fulfils the requirements of that Standard, it would be unreasonable for any National Standards Body to argue with the justification for the CE mark. There is a further issue in that companies need to be prevented from claiming activity in a product which common sense would dictate is not a disinfectant. For example distilled water lyses many bacteria and therefore does have some bactericidal effects. No reasonable person would however describe distilled water as a disinfectant. Standards allow the definition of a minimum requirement for a disinfectant. Furthermore, companies need to be able to validate claims of bactericidal, virucidal or tuberculocidal activity. Standards give clear guidance on what is required to validate such claims. European standards are co-ordinated by the Comite Europeen de Normalisation (CEN) in their Management Centre which is based in Brussels. CEN, the European Committee for Standardization,