Standards Development

Scope

This document specifies a test method for evaluating the antimicrobial (antibacterial and/or antifungal) activity of footwear and footwear components.

This document is applicable to all types of footwear and footwear components employing diffusing antimicrobial treatments.

Purpose

— In recent years, footwear products with antimicrobial function develop rapidly with the growth health concerns from society and people. Antimicrobial activity is important indicator of antimicrobial materials and products, and scientific test method is the key to reflect antimicrobial activity objectively. So the healthy and orderly development of antimicrobial footwear products is inseparable from the evaluation standard of antimicrobial activity.

— The inhibition zone method (Agar diffusion test) is a classical method to determine the antimicrobial activity of products according to the inhibition zone, which is easy to operate, low cost, accurate and reliable.

— For ISO/TC 216, quantitative method for bacteria (ISO 16187), and quantitative and qualitative methods for antifungal (ISO 20150 and ISO 19574) have been developed. At present, there are no specific international standards to assess the antibacterial activity of footwear qualitatively. therefore, there is a need to develop standards to provide qualitative test methods to assess antibacterial and anti-yeast activity. To devolvement a qualitative test method which will be a supplement to ISO 16187, and both of them will provide suitable assessment of antibacterial activity of footwear and footwear components from qualitative and quantitative aspects. For different standards users, this standard can provide another test method for users to choose based on their purpose.

— In additional, some agents used in the footwear only focus on antimicrobials effect and ignore safety requirements, which leading to a negative effect to human physiology，and then more customer complaints to happen. It is unwise to pursue only antibacterial effect and ignore human health. We need strict rules and measurements for the safety of antimicrobial products; This standard gives forward and afterward preventive measures, and solves problems in the performance process. A preliminary judgment of antimicrobial efficiency and safety can be determined by the size of inhibition zone.

— This standard will be used by footwear manufacturers and others as a test of the antimicrobial performance of footwear products, components and materials to develop higher quality and safety products for consumers. Note: in case the WI is based on documents from other organizations than ISO/IEC, please specify it here