By John Facella, P.E., NFPA 1802 member

The National Fire Protection Association (NFPA) has a draft standard for portable radios used in the hazard zone by emergency services personnel.  The NFPA 1802 committee has been working on this standard for five years with a group of fire service personnel, manufacturers, and other experts.

Some of the features in this standard include standardized ergonomics, hazard zone specific features, over temperature and other failure indications, the ability to interchange remote speaker microphones (RSMs) among various manufacturers, provision for both wired and wireless RSMs, RSM operational features including emergency alarm button, operation indicators, and programmable button, intrinsically safe certification, audio intelligibility testing, a data logger of device history, and many other provisions.

In April of 2018 the NFPA Standards Council approved the 1802 draft standard to enter into a fall 2020 cycle.  The next step is to allow public comment.  Anyone can provide input or edits to the draft; you don’t need to be an NFPA member.  Public comment opened in May, and will close January 3, 2019.  The draft is posted for review and comment from the public at the NFPA 1802 page:  https://www.nfpa.org/codes-and-standards/all-codes-and-standards/list-of-codes-and-standards/detail?code=1802.   (Note: commenters will have to create a profile by providing an email and password, but you don’t have to be an NFPA member.)  Once all the public inputs are received, the committee will re-convene in a First Draft Meeting in early 2019.  The committee is required to review and either adopt or answer all of the public comments.

Because of the importance of this work, the committee asks that interested parties, especially firefighters, hazmat technicians, SWAT teams, and others who work in the hazard zone, review the first draft document and provide input.  The new standard will be issued in 2020.