The impetus for the European Standardisation Committee to undertake the development of a performance standard for characterising the effectiveness of wood preservatives from biological tests, lies in the Construction Products Directive. This is effectively the European Community law which provides the basis for Construction Products to be traded across all member states without technical or regulatory barriers and without having to undergo further testing or re-certification. The performance standard covering wood preservatives is EN 599 and it defines the performance which preservative products will be required to achieve in specific laboratory and field tests, in order to be accepted and marketed as suitable for particular conditions of use. Five hazard classes of use are defined in another standard (EN 355-1) and EN 599 lists the specific biological tests required for each hazard class, the maximum amount of the product that can be applied in each test, the need for pre-leaching or pre-ageing and the rationale for deriving a value (the biological reference value) for the minimum amount of product deemed effective in each test. The highest biological reference value determined from all the tests is defined as the critical value and it is this value which is carried forward to the standard covering treated wood (EN 351) to provide the basis for defining the minimum amount of product required for effectiveness within treated commodities. EN 599 lists the minimum testing requirements for each hazard class together with optional additional tests to provide efficacy assessment against a wider range of target pests or to increase confidence in the critical value by incorporating data from longer-term field tests. The standard also describes the requirements for marking and labelling preservative products to describe their suitability for specific uses. Work on EN 599 commenced in 1988 and its development has required negotiated agreement between the 18 member states of the CEN/CENELEC region with 12 different working languages and 3 different official languages for documentation. EN 599 is now at the final stage of submission to vote and the decision on its adoption and implementation will be announced before the end of 1994.

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