 I've got my pick of the litter here, yeah, yeah, it looks like everything's going to work here. Anyway, I know you're all surprised to see me, because it did seem that I might have been tarred, feathered, lynched, eviscerated, something, about a year ago, right here, right here. I think it's standing right about here where it happened. Anyway, so that all went really well, I enjoyed it, I said, gosh, I'm going to go out and punch them out, I've got to come back for more, please, can you, can you? So Ash kind of hooked me up, that was really nice. Anyway, what I'll do today is just kind of give a little bit of background on, you know, the company, this, that, and the other, some other things, and then talk about this concept of developing of criteria for the industry. One of the things you would want to have is some kind of a playing field for fairness, a way to get credit for what you've got, to show that it's safe to others, to help you get your companies or facilities insured. Normally in all sorts of different industries, they do that by a combination of standards and codes. So I'll talk a bit about that and how it all works together, and then give you some updates on those activities. So, you know, just kind of going through the flow of what we'll go over today, this concept of, okay, background on NSF, some of the, like, other industries we work with, and then, again, codes and standards, then the criteria, which you can find on the NSF website, and it's really the, it's not a standard, but it's the criteria we currently use to evaluate a flotation system, and then how that's going through really a wide public review discussion to improve it so that it could become a standard, really the standard of excellence or the standard of acceptance for flotation systems. We'll talk about that criteria a bit, and then, like I said, the next step, some research initiatives, and I'll leave my contact details. In general, I work with this company called NSF, it's that blue round mark that you sometimes see on different products, either in restaurants or in plumbing fixtures, pool and spa equipment. Our company was formed in 1944 as a foundation from the University of Michigan School of Public Health, and, you know, over the number of years, our company has grown from, you know, three guys that were all public health officials back in the 40s to now over 2,500 people working all over the world. So our company is not the government, however, you know, so we're a non-governmental organization, we do work with governmental officials, you know, they participate in our standards, development, our activities, you know, we have to work within their structures and their requirements so that, you know, we can meet the needs of all stakeholders. So some of those entities we work with that are relevant to your industry are the CDC and the EPA. NSF is accredited by a number of different entities, you know, people are always in auditing us, going on ride-along audits with us, testing the personnel in our laboratory on their test methods, and the two majors are the ANSI American National Standards Institute and Standards Council of Canada to cover us for most of North America. This is just a little visual chronology, you don't need to worry about it, but it just kind of goes from, you know, our birthday back in 1944 to the different industries we started to work with. The goal for our company is really to help the food industry with standards for sanitation, for standards for the equipment that are used at the facilities, for operational and inspection criteria for how you would assess the competency of those food handling persons to make sure things are kept at the right temperature, so that it doesn't create undue health risks. So really it just kind of went from there, other industries heard about what we did, how we operated, how we brought people together to, you know, form consensus to develop acceptable criteria, and then, you know, we started getting contacted by the plumbing industry, the recreational water industry, wastewater industry, just kind of went like that on, and then as our company grew, we set up operations in different countries as well. So the big, you know, situation for us is, yes, where there's public health and safety organization, you know, but we don't have all the knowledge, we're just trying to bring the knowledge together, get things done by taking knowledge from the manufacturers and other groups. So we don't make the products you buy, we're really just trying to help create reasonable evaluation criteria that are protective that everyone can agree on is going to make a better product that will help to ensure that public health and safety. So some of the industries that we work with, you know, could best be characterized as, let's say the people that make the products, so that could be in the drinking water industry, the pool and spa equipment industry, the food equipment industry, automotive, the nutraceuticals, the medical device industry, but so you got the manufacturers and they'll typically contact us either when they're having problems or after they've had a really bad situation. Same thing with like the professional player, you know, baseball players association after they had a really bad PR incident about people taking things and being on steroids and oh, I didn't know the gun was loaded, you know, that's, that's when they usually contact us after the stuff hits the fans normally when we're contacted, and then it's damage control and trying to set up, you know, protective layers of some kind of infrastructure and criteria to evaluate products or systems to help prevent stupid things from happening. You know, so the same thing happened with the drink, you know, bottled water, that association, they're looking to make sure that, you know, the bottled water is actually safe, it doesn't have contaminants in it. Yeah, you want nice little flavors or colors or whatever. But there's other things you're trying to prevent being in there. The same thing goes with all these other different associations where I just gave some examples here. The other thing is that some of the people that sell the products, they want to know that, you know, what they're doing is putting things on the shelf that actually comply with standards, regs or different standards of care, even if there's not like a law about it. Maybe there's industry criteria and standard that would help them, you know, make sure that what they're providing to you, the consumer, isn't going to be harmful, and it meets some level of acceptable standards. So the concept of the acceptance that we have comes from, yes, our interaction with the different industries, the accreditation that we have, but it's kind of the way that we interact with folks. We try to come up with this balanced interaction that really tries to anticipate the needs and listen to the concerns and issues that everyone brings, and then sharing that and saying, well, how can we resolve this issue that, you know, Division X or let's say the operators of the facility might bring up or the governmental officials might have different concerns. And of course, you know, the people that are making the products, the manufacturers have different concerns, but trying to get those all aired out, create reasonable requirements for a given product or industry that everyone can agree upon. So a way that happens is really with this issue of the standards and the codes. So, you know, we'll talk about the specific differences of them, but generally, you know, the standards are going to be used to evaluate a material or a product, but then there might be system standards that kind of take a assemblage of different components or parts to evaluate the entire performance of the system. And then there's the, you know, the code, and typically the code is a much higher level document. It doesn't have a lot of the, like, technical, quantitative values at what the product must perform or achieve, but it's what you, the facility operator must achieve, how you must take care of that equipment. So the codes and standards, just trying to kind of stratify and break those apart for you. Again, the code has a high level information. Typically, it's about facility design, how you build the facility, how you design it, and then how you operate it. Pretty common sense. And then, you know, you're also creating that code because someone is probably trying to make, I'm sorry, someone is going to make sure that the code is followed and that that facility is operated in a particular safe manner. So typically, that's like your building inspector, the fire safety inspector, plumbing inspector, or the public health safety inspector. You know, those are the common ones you're probably familiar with, and they would use the code, that's their little bible, that's the criteria they follow to assess conformity and make sure that the facility is deemed safe and acceptable. And then you can get your certificate of occupancy, you can get your insurance coverage and things of that nature for the operation. So the difference there with the standard, the standard is kind of like this little mad technical document that has all these criteria about how to test something or evaluate it, typically more in a laboratory setting, so that when you send all the pieces parts out, they can be built into a system that's safe, because you have a bunch of safe components that are evaluated to be used in a certain way. So the testing method is going to be, again, having these methods and criteria for testing and quantitatively evaluating a product, typically for things like the output or performance or life or, you know, fire safety or not generating too much heat. And some standards are developed with minimum criteria, and they just kind of have a one size fits all, like you have to jump over the hurdle. And other standards might have a stratification. You have to jump over the hurdle, but then there's different levels of performance. And really that just comes down to how the industry wants to set up their standards. Next concept is this issue of the, you know, testing, you know, talk about standards and then there's the testing and or an inspection and things that can culminate in certification. So it's another concept or term, but really what you're doing is taking the standard to evaluate a product, and some of that is like a design criteria, information and instructions, then there's usually testing of a product. And then if the testing and the design criteria are met, then you do an inspection at the production site and it's like, yes, you really do use what you're saying, you're using, you're not changing designs, suppliers, materials, claims, what have you, operational conditions. So that once all that's met, then the product can be certified. And all that means is that some company, like NSF, is certifying that that product made by that company complies with that criteria. That's essentially what certification is. It's not meant to be like you're playing favorites and saying, oh, I like Bill's product. Bill's product is good. You can say that because really the work that goes into developing the standard is what's considered good and acceptable. But it's trying to do it in a very quantitative fashion that's fair for all when you create those criteria for the standard. So again, the certification then is combined of those initial evaluations, testing and work and auditing, and then assessing conformance, not just at one time but over time. So it's kind of like the difference between a date and a marriage, you know, there's a test or there's a certification. So all the stuff gets, you know, all the information and everything gets brought together from the testing and evaluation to then be support certification of that product over time. So there's normally some kind of ongoing monitoring program. This is like a real simple little visual. Typically it's this concept of submit information, have it reviewed, determine a testing plan based on the standard or standards, conduct that testing, conduct the facility inspection to verify that yes you really do use these components, these materials, you're not, you know, swapping out different things that might affect the performance of that product or system. Then use all that documentation data as part of the certification package to defend that product and show that it's good, you know, show that it's safe, it's accepted. And that's what really helps then, you know, companies sell their products and have their products accepted all over. So, you know, after you get the documentation, there's normally some kind of annual audits and evaluation program. Like in the drinkwater industry, you know, there's annual audits anywhere from one to four audits on a production site and annual testing. And then other industries, it's somewhere between, like OSHA for electrical safety requires four annual audits at the production site. And then other industries might just require one annual audit. Next concept is this, you know, the certification process. So I kind of talked about that. I'm not going to go into much detail on it, but the concept is it would apply to the testing as it would be for a flotation systems very conceptually applied to what I just showed. You'd have this engineering drawings or system component assemblage and those would be evaluated to a criteria. One of those criteria would be the NSF Standard 50 and or the new criteria that was developed for flotation systems at CCS 1204. So just to kind of give a little, I guess, overview of Standard 50. Standard 50 is a standard that was developed really starting back in 1959 when the pool and spa industry asked NSF to create criteria for all the equipment that's used at a pool or a spa. The standard covers all sorts of different product types, really everything you could imagine that's used in circulation and water treatment at a rec water facility, pool or spa water park. And then the standard covers material safety, usually pressure safety, corrosion resistance, disinfection, efficacy, filtration, just depends on the specific product type. And then the standard is really kind of unique in the wide range of products that it covers and also the way it's developed. So the standard does not a static document, it grows, things are continually being added to it or as some issue comes up in the industry maybe an aspect of the standard gets changed. The other thing that is the way we manage the standard, so there's equal voting membership as I mentioned before. So the manufacturer group and then the public health official group and then the operator user group, those are three equal groups, they each have a vote on the standard. So there's 11 persons in each group, but then there's other like task group levels that have a whole bunch of other people that are involved. But the intent was to try to create a balance so no one group could control the operation or kind of steer it to their advantage only. This just gives a quick overview of a bunch of the different items that are covered by the standard for reference. So I won't go into the details here. But the other thing is this concept of the equal three part voting, again those public health officials, NSF was formed by public health officials, so we kind of lean that conservative way. I hate to use the C word. But the criteria that was created was to do that is really to try to protect public health, but also ensure that the products work to a certain level. And then the manufacturers, they might have products that can pass the criteria a whole lot higher than what the criteria said just depends how those things are developed. So with the equal voting membership, that's where the action really happens to add something to the standard or change it, but there's a task group so it's almost like you have this voting membership of about 30 some persons that are, you know, some manufacturers, some public health officials, some are engineering firm representatives. And then you have all the people that actually do the heavy lifting in the work. So there's a lot of people in this room, they're actually involved in the NSF standard 50 flotation task group. And they're working to really from the day in 2013, when we gave the first issue paper about this, and then the task group was created to try to create a standard for flotation systems and equipment. So there's been a number of task group meetings. And there really hasn't been a ton of balloting, but there's been comments submitted on draft, draft language. And so I'll get into a little bit of that. As it relates to the whole concept of voting, you know, we're trying to always vote to see what everyone's opinion is to formally get everyone to take a stand on an issue. Are you for or against why? All those types of issues. And so typically, you know, that that's always happening either with this testing and certification to NSF standard 50, or in this case that CCS-12804 float system criteria. So just in talking about that, you know, mentioned the old standard, but it's not that old because it gets changed every year. You know, some aspect of work or new product type gets added to it. Well, similarly, the 12804, it's kind of like this. It's like Rome. It wasn't created in a day. Looks really nice, but it probably, it's probably gonna take a little time to get, you know, the standard set for this industry. And who knows really what that future holds, but again, people here are taking an active role to shape it and to have their voices be heard. So there's a bunch of criteria that were in that CCS document. And the intent there was to take a look at all the existing standards and codes and laws that were in effect and put that into the criteria, really kind of make it conservative so that when it was released, you know, the public health officials wouldn't be against it. They would, you know, support it because it might, I guess all hit all their dopamine receptors. Made them happy. And then, you know, the intent was to also have it be, you know, a very robust kind of product requirements set. And then once it got out to the group, really the whole community and everyone could be involved in shaping it, maybe some of the requirements that were put in there were unnecessarily high and those could be removed. But we figured if we start with something that's too low, you know, you don't want to create a joke. So the intent was to create this, you know, strong set of criteria and then get more wide industry input on it because it's always easier to look at something and go, that's bad, that's good, as opposed to someone saying here, write more in peace. Good luck with that. So you kind of start with the documents, an abbreviated version and then, you know, shape it and take it from there. So within the floatation system criteria, a lot of those common, normal issues, material safety, design construction. And then you got things just like your obvious issues of, you know, the shell or the body or the liner to be sufficiently strong and then slip resistant. And then things like the suction entrapment, you know, you wouldn't want to make sure that it's not going to create risk there and there's already laws that dictate compliance with that for submerged suction. And then some of the biggest issues are more the disinfection test, you know, like there's filtration, removal of contaminants and then there's disinfection essentially killing some types of microorganisms at some level. Typically the three, I think it's Paul said earlier, the three log reduction, three log kill. Don't have that other vision. Then there's the, you know, other aspects like, well, what are the markings that should be on the product to, you know, help the users and the operators understand what should be done as well as the instructions for operation and maintenance of that product. It's just a quick visual of some of the things that are in that CCA document but you can see it on our website. I can send you guys a hyperlink to it later if you haven't already seen it. And again, that was the start document in 2013 that the task group's been working on. And so those things that they're working on are all like, should we keep these criteria in the, you know, what would eventually be a standard for the industry? Or should they not be in there? Where's it too excessive and it's really not an issue? So again, we start from a very conservative perspective, try to cover everything as much as we could. But there are certain things that weren't covered in the float criteria like the size of the structure, how big it should be, what not. But there were other things that were meant to be like a performance test as opposed to a design criteria. But within there, again, some of the biggest issues are probably the life cycle testing, making sure the disinfection treatment system works when it's new and it works after using it for simulating several months of use and potentially abuse to make sure it again is still stout, strong and functional. Within that criteria, there's other things like, you know, ADA kind of requirements for the handholds and polls. You want to make sure that those things would comply with normal laws that are already in effect. So we just put that in the criteria as well. But then, you know, let's kind of talk about the whole progress of that task group. The document was issued in 2013. It was shared at a normal annual NSF standard 50 meeting. And then from that, there was a lot of calls and meetings during 2014. And then in 2015, unfortunately, that's one of the staff at NSF that works in that group transferred to another department. So I think we lost a little continuity. And it happened to happen shortly after we had a ton of comments that came in. So everyone started writing their own versions of what they wanted to see the document be. And that's been sort of difficult for us to then kind of wrestle it all back together to then go through each of those comments. So that's kind of where we're at now, working on it. But the other thing we're doing is different research projects. So we've proposed some things. The industry has asked us to do, you know, potentially come up with different plans to generate the data that will answer questions and really help this industry deal with the public health officials, answer their questions, provide data to the users and the facility operators that can help defend their companies, their operations, help them get insurance coverage, help them get licensed and permitted. The next steps are really just to agree on those performance criteria to confirm, you know, are we going to revise the existing criteria and if so, how? And then to perform different types of testing. So some of those, you'll find that we've got the people, especially even the organizers of the conference here and a number of companies are participating. They're looking to investigate different issues like the efficacy of, you know, what sort of impact is there from the Epsom salt solution on different organisms under let's say a stirred or shaken solution, you know, because when you have a user going in the tank, they stir up the solution. But what if you had a static solution? Maybe everything just stays on the top. But when it goes through that cleaning cycle that might get better exposure to the Epsom salt solution and have an effect on different microorganisms. So maybe even without anything else being utilized, there might be some positive disinfection efficacy occurring just from the Epsom salt solution because it's kind of a hostile dense solution. The other things are to look at system type tests. You know, everyone in the industry is interested in using UV or ozone or UV hydrogen peroxide to come up with a simulated typical size and application and a specific UV system and see what that can do, confirm what its performance levels are and then maybe multiple people can utilize that data if they're using a system just like that out in the field or in their float facility. But again, there's a number of folks to talk with here at this conference. That's a great thing. You can be in here, get some information and then talk to all the different providers because they'll have a different perspective and a different solution to these problems for creating the best float experience for everyone. So again, just kind of talking about some of those different test concepts, there is the essentially the Epsom salt solution test is one that the industry was interested in developing and so there's this concept of crowdsourcing and trying to help develop the financials to get the data. Once you get the data, you can start to change the existing code and standards landscape to get the issues of conflicts that you want to have done. Again, system tests to look at hydrogen peroxide and or UV systems. So it might be a certain UV running a certain flow rate, a certain cleaning cycle and a certain concentration of hydrogen peroxide. What are those magic levels? What should everyone be using? Nobody really knows. Everyone has their own experience of what they've done and who knows how much contaminants have been brought in by their users. You know, some people probably shower more, have more hair and other things that create load. And then another concept that was brought up was this air quality. OK, there's this issue of air circulation, getting oxygen into the tank, make sure you have at least passive or maybe forced air flow. Then there's ozone issues that people are using ozone. You want to make sure you don't have too much ozone in the system because that's not good for the respiratory tract. And then there's issues of the disinfection byproducts that could be created if you're using a chlorination or a bromination treatment. And depending on how much you use and how much organic load is in the system, you might create disinfection byproducts that could be harmful. So there's all sorts of other initiatives that this industry could use the research to get things done that they're trying to justify. But maybe the status quo, as Paul said earlier today, he can't personally change the standards or the codes. But working together, we can get things done by developing the data to justify those changes. Last, again, please help your industry get those questions answered and develop the data to affect change. So some of the takeaways. Yep, Standard 50 covers a whole bunch of different stuff. There's a whole bunch of references currently in place now that refer to that Standard 50 because when people look at a float situation, which it's not a pool, but that's what they see. They see water, they see a person and they think it's a pool or a spa. So that's how it gets treated currently. I've had conversations with the guys with the Model Aquatic Health Code and CDC. And they're like, yeah, it's a pool. Until we have some other criteria that's defensible and justified, that's how it's going to get treated. So that's not my words. That's just what they said. But anyway, the NSF criteria, what we're trying to do is work with the status quo but try to change it in a defensible manner and get everyone to see all the data and all the justification for that. So our standards, we revise them each year as needed. When issues are brought to the table, there's a meeting, there's presentations, and there's action items. To that end, we're really trying to do that with flotation systems to help with those systems being permitted and accepted throughout North America. And then the float criteria is the specific way in which that's happening. Really, let the industry directly affect and impact and modify that criteria. Anyway, thank you guys for your patience. There's my contact details and we can send this presentation if you have any questions. Thanks. Thank you.