ASTM D2047 was first published by the ASTM in 1953 using the James Machine to assess the “safety” of Floor Wax and Floor Polish. It was never intended to be used to assess the safety of floors, but because about 99% of floor waxes back in the 1950’s “passed” this nonsensical “test” with greater than a 0.50 SCOF (static coefficient of friction), flooring manufacturers quickly jumped on board with using this irrelevant test to say their slippery tile wasn’t slippery.
The ASTM D2047 “safety test” measures how slippery a floor is to someone standing still (static) on the floor, and the floor is clean and dry. How many slip and fall injuries have occurred while someone was standing still on a freshly cleaned and dried floor? Exactly zero. Since the dawn of humankind, there have been zero such injuries recorded in this situation. So why run this test? To fool flooring consumers into believing your flooring has passed some sort of “safety test”, but this test is nothing short of a scam. It doesn’t matter how slippery a floor is to someone standing still on a clean floor. This doesn’t assess safety in ANY way.
ASTM F489 was withdrawn in 2005, and that test was for testing the “safety” of all types of floors with the exact same test method using the same instrument – the James Machine. (There’s a newer version on this lame device in the world today, but it’s still running the exact same worthless test.) The ASTM F489 had to be withdrawn because it was identifying every floor on earth to be “not slippery”, or above the 0.50 SCOF threshold for safety. This threshold for safety of 0.50 isn’t based on any peer-reviewed international science. They picked that number because every floor polish and flooring in America was above that number, presumably.
The ASTM C1028 SCOF test was also withdrawn in 2014 by the ASTM because it also was measuring how slippery a floor was to someone standing still on the floor (not walking across it), and it was found over many years to be utterly worthless in assessing safety. All SCOF tests are not valid for assessing safety because no-one slips while standing still. These tests are all scams perpetrated and created by the American tile industry to lull flooring consumers into a false sense of security, and anyone using this scam should be considered a scam artist, a con artist, or a fool. SCOF testing was debunked around the world as a “safety assessment” long ago.
The NFSI/ANSI B101.1-2009 SCOF test was allowed to expire in 2014 because it was designed to mimic ASTM C1028, which was withdrawn that same year. B101.1 was great at saying slippery floors weren’t slippery, so the manufacturer of the BOT-3000E allowed the ANSI/NFSI B101.1 test to expire because it was making the instrument used in the test look worthless. If it couldn’t identify any floors as slippery (even when the building owner is getting complaints and slip injuries regularly on the floor), then why spend $9,000.00 on a worthless device? Perhaps if you’re an insurance company that wants to deny every slip and fall claim and say no floor on earth is slippery? That’s a pretty sadistic scam for profit!
The ASTM E303-22 was updated in 2022 and uses dynamic coefficient of friction (DCOF) to truly assess the slip and fall safety of a floor using 50 years of international science and research conducted in over 50 nations. Hundreds of thousands of floors across the world have been investigated using the pendulum DCOF tester after slip and fall accidents have been recorded on them, and hundreds of thousands of floors that have had no slips recorded on them have been tested as well. The Health and Safety Executive (HSE) in the United Kingdom (the UK’s version of OSHA) has published guidance on interpreting results from the pendulum DCOF test, and so has Australia and New Zealand. Simply put: the pendulum DCOF test is the science used around the world for 50 years to assess the real-world slip potential of a floor.
ASTM F1677 and ASTM F1679 were both SCOF tests that were withdrawn in 2006. These instruments were found to be utterly worthless in assessing safety and were therefore rejected by both the ASTM and OSHA around 2005-2006. These instruments (the English XL and Brungraber Mark II VIT) are still used today, despite their standards being withdrawn due to a lack of an approved precision statement being provided to the ASTM from the users of these devices. They are used by expert slip and fall “liars for hire” to create bogus “floor safety data” for insurance companies and their highly-paid lawyers who defend slip and fall lawsuits every day. They are almost always working for the defense.
Innocent people have been horribly and permanently injured by slippery floors that were inappropriately installed in places that get wet or otherwise lubricated in use. The Brungraber Mark II people changed the color of their device and put grooves in the rubber slider used on it – like a car tire has grooves to improve traction – and now uses a device in court that has no published standard in ANY nation – the new and improved (if you’re good at lying under oath) Brungraber Mark IIIB. It’s the same device as the Brungraber Mark II measuring SCOF using fake science with a new name and a new paint job. These expert “liars for hire” claim ASTM F2508 “verifies” their instrument and therefore they don’t need to prove to any standards-publishing organization that it’s a real scientific device with precision. This way they can continue to make BIG bucks lying for defense lawyers in high-dollar slip and fall lawsuits, but F2508 is a scam they published themselves after conducting a secretive ” tribometer study” themselves. Saying F2508 “verifies” their instrument is akin to saying the horizon verifies the earth is flat. It’s nonsense, and here’s more information on that scam.
All the American SCOF tests (ASTM C1028, NFSI/ANSI B101.1, ASTM F489, ASTM F1677, and ASTM F1679, to name a few), like the soon-to-be-withdrawn ASTM D2047 (we’re working on getting this withdrawn presently and won’t quit until it’s done) are all scams that are not for assessing safety at all. These tests were created by highly-paid expert slip and fall “liars for hire”, tile salespeople, and flooring manufacturers to create lies for consumers and juries. Shame on them! They get innocent people horribly injured with fake science to make a quick buck on slippery flooring and save insurance companies from paying out on valid claims. Don’t fall for the ASTM D2047 scam, or the UL 410 scam – it’s exactly the same scam.
Need reliable floor slip resistance testing so you don’t install a slippery floor and need to hire an expert “liar for hire” to get you out of a legitimate slip and fall injury claim? We’re here to help! We’ve been specializing in reliable floor slip resistance testing for about a quarter of a century.