The IEC has started developing an International Standard on RoHS technical documentation. This will be an international version of the European standard, EN 50581:2012 “Technical documentation for the assessment of electrical and electronic products with respect to the restriction of hazardous substances” which was developed by the European CENELEC standards organization under mandate from the European Commission.

Technical documentation is one of the mandatory requirements imposed on manufacturers for compliance to the EU RoHS Directive and must be in place before an EEE product may be placed on the EU market (for foreign manufactured products, placing on the market usually occurs at the time of import). This EN 50581 standard is already in place for the EU RoHS Directive, but there is a strong desire to leverage this standard for use in other worldwide RoHS regulations. A new work item proposal to develop such a standard within the IEC was distributed earlier this year. The work item was broadly approved, including USA, Canada, China, Japan, Korea, and most EU countries.

The standard will be known as IEC 63000 and is being developed under IEC/TC111 (Environmental standardization for electrical and electronic products and systems). EN 50581 is expected to be leveraged heavily in the development of the International standard. The project team held its first meeting in Brussels on October 21-22, 2015 and will establish its first committee draft (CD) of the standard at an upcoming meeting on November 18, 2015.

Contact ECD Compliance, for additional information and services to develop or assess RoHS Technical Documentation or to stay up to date on International Environmental Standards.