What is UL Certification and Why Does it Matter?
by Natalie Schlueter
As your organization continues to adopt and deploy mobile devices, one of your priorities remains to keep a safe working environment for employees, customers, students and users, right? To help ensure that safe environment, UL safety standards are set in place. This little symbol on the side of a product symbolizes the safety standard you set out for you and your employees. As you probably already know, high safety standards are crucial in order to increase trust amongst your organization, and to decrease accidents and injuries while on the job.
What is UL?
UL stands for Underwriter Laboratories and is the backbone of safety in the United States. UL 60950 Information Technology Equipment specifies safety tests and sets benchmarks for Information Technology equipment which includes everything from computers and phones, displays and projects, to supporting equipment like charging carts. They encompass almost every piece of technology you can get your hands on to ensure highest quality safety. They are the global safety science leader, having over 21 certification processes for products, facilities, processes or systems to comply with the best safety regulations around.
Why Does UL Certification Matter?
When you pick a product that is UL certified, you are making the decision to invest in something that you can count on to last a long time while ensuring the highest level of precaution. Let’s take a look at the UL standards for charging carts. This standard specifies tests for:
electrical shock: all conductive material must be grounded, preventing electric shock in the case of a surge fault coming from the power outlet, the product itself, or from a device that you connect to the cart.
stability: UL requires that a cart must remain stable in a variety of situations: up an incline, with various weights placed on it, and in a variety of poses with the doors open and with the doors closed. These stability tests ensure that your cart will not tip over on an incline, or when someone leans, or places something on the cart.
fire resistance: UL provides training, advisory, testing, verification, inspection and certification solutions in order to help companies be backed by a company with a rich history of fire safety science behind them. This ensures a company’s compliance with industry standards goes above and beyond.
Things to Consider
Whichever store and charge cart you are considering for your organization be sure to select one which has been certified to UL 60950 by a nationally recognized testing lab. You can do that by following these two simple steps:
- Look for a safety certification UL mark or UL logo on the product itself.
- If you cannot find the mark or have any doubt, you can ask the vendor or manufacturer for a copy of their compliance certificate.
Bretford products have been through their required UL tests in order to ensure the highest quality safety for you and your organization. We know that testing and certification is of the utmost importance to provide you with the best product possible.
When you choose a certified product, you’re choosing equipment for your organization that supports a safe working and learning environment. We are committed to bringing you safe, protected products. Insist on safety. Insist on certified.
