(National Fire Prevention Agency section 99), NFPA 99 provides a test methodology for measuring the conductivity of flooring and other surfaces. This test was originally designed in the 1960’s for hospital operating rooms that used explosive gases for anesthesia. Operating room surfaces were required to be conductive so that static fields would be safely discharged to ground instead of dangerously discharged, as a spark could ignite an explosion.
Note: The NFPA no longer includes ESD flooring in their standard and the NFPA test method, which uses 500 volts of applied D/C current, is not used to evaluate ESD floors.
