Littelfuse, Inc. (LFUS) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Hi, everyone. My name is [ Ariel Blivas ], and I'm a Marketing Specialist in the industrial business unit here at Littelfuse. Thank you for joining us today for the misconceptions of shock safety webcast. [Operator Instructions] Next to that, the button allows you to learn about our presenters, Terry and Mark, and feel free to connect or reach out to them. Next is a list of resources, including our slide deck that you can review and download at any time. Included in the resource section is a 16-page paper that covers more detail on the topic, so be sure to download that. The last widget is for the PDH credit that will be e-mailed after the webcast if you attend for at least 50 minutes. With all that said, let me introduce our presenters. Mark Pollock is the Global Product Manager, responsible for product line strategy for the full industrial relay product portfolio. He is a member of the Standards Council of Canada as well as an active member of the IEEE, serving on various standards, conference and local section executive committees over the last 15 years. Mark holds BSc degrees in electrical engineering and computer science from the University of Saskatchewan and is a registered professional engineer in the province of Saskatchewan, Canada. Terry Becker is an independent electrical authority and specialist and consultant at TW Becker Electrical Safety Consulting, Inc. Terry was the previous owner and visionary of ESPS Electrical Safety Program Solutions Inc and spent over 10 years growing the company into an industry-leading total solutions provider for electrical safety consulting, external electrical safety audit, licensed electrical safety programs, electrical safety consulting related to electrical safety program development and arc flash and shock and training solutions. Terry is the first past vice chair of the CSA-Z462 Technical Committee, a voting member and working group leader for class 4.1 and the annexes. Terry is also a voting member of the CSA-Z463 maintenance of electrical system standard and IEEE 1584. Terry has over 28 years of experience as an electrical engineer and is a professional engineer in the provinces of British Columbia, Alberta, Saskatchewan, Manitoba and Ontario, a certified electrical safety compliance professional and IEEE senior member. With that, I'll turn it over to Mark.

Thanks, [ Ariel ]. Now some might ask, isn't safety the responsibility of the safety committee or the safety manager. But in this cartoon, while being funny, of course, it really helps to make the point that electrical safety and especially safety from shock, like we'll talk about today, is really everyone's responsibility. So from the electrician working in and around the panels, to the equipment designers to management who are ultimately responsible for the policies. So just by attending this webcast, you're taking the first step towards education and improving safety from electrical shock. So you can go ahead and give yourself a pat on the back for that. So we'll use our time together today to learn a few things about electrical shock and how to protect yourself and your employees. We'll discuss data from our electrical shock survey in addition to sharing industry data that you can use to benchmark your understanding as well as your safety program. Next, Terry will cover the history of work practices that may shock you unintended and long-term effects of shock that you may not be aware of and some specific blind spots and misconceptions around safety training programs that he has seen firsthand and how risk assessments can help improve the safety. Then we'll wrap up with an overview of an engineering control that will allow you to remove human error and overcome the weaknesses of training. So that's to a lot to get -- a lot to go through. So let's get started. We're all coming here from different perspectives, different backgrounds. So I thought it would be good to start off by reviewing some of the types of electrical injuries that we're talking about here today and to put us on the same page. First, one that is commonly miscategorized in injury statistics is a fall that occurs after receiving an electric shock. This could be somebody working with the lighting circuit while standing on a ladder and then after receiving a shock, they fall off of the ladder. So this is often classified as a fall injury or death, if that's the case. And the fact that it's caused by an electric shock may not be counted. You can also receive thermal or burn injuries from a shock or arc flash. Now this can include burn injuries where you have entry and exit wounds from the current, internal thermal injuries or burn from the intense heat of an arc flash. When the current passes through or over your body, you can also experience pain, difficulty breathing, internal thermal injury or even abnormal heart rhythm, unconsciousness and fibrillation. And finally, if the shock is sufficient, it can be fatal, in which case, it will be called electrocution. Now needless to say, you want to avoid all of these injuries. So before we get too much further, I would like to take a moment to pause and get some quick feedback. So the question here is, have you experienced an electrical shock while on the job? So if you could just take a few minutes to -- or take a few seconds to use the button on the screen and click submit to put in your vote. And you can see we don't have any other conditions on here. It's a fairly open question. So just looking to get your feedback on that. I'll just wait another couple of seconds here. I see that getting quite a few responses. Maybe give you just another -- count to 5, and then we can take a look at the results. [Voting]

Okay. Well, it looks like we have a majority answer. And looks like we have just about 50-50 of people who have experienced a shock while on the job. So that's not too far off from our statistic, which we can talk about here in a minute that we've seen. And as a part 2 of that question, we'd like to ask, if you answered, yes, if you were part of the half of the group that answered yes, what voltage did you experience that shock? Was it essentially on a 240-volt system or below? Or was it on a higher voltage. So those that answered, no, I guess you get a break here, but not long enough to go anywhere, just stick around. So wait just another minute to get a few of those people to put in those responses. Right. We're getting close here. [Voting]

All right. Well, thanks for the responses. So here you can see that -- have a little bit of a split. Yes, it looks like about 2/3 of those were 250-volt and below, 240-volt, 120-volt systems. Well, thanks for the feedback. Now it falls into line from what the number we're showing on the screen here. So earlier this year, Littelfuse surveyed people whose work plays a role in the electrical safety of a facility. And we do have more complete results that are in the safety report that [ Ariel ] mentioned that's attached to the webcast. However, this is one result we wanted to highlight. As we found that of all the people we surveyed, it was almost 40% that said they had received a shock on the system that was above 220. Now this is a large number. And when we look at the responses we got here today, it was almost half of the people that had a shock, and a lot of those were on 120 and 240-volt systems. So it's a very large number of people who are affected by shock. And shocks on low voltage systems, they do seem to have been downplayed in years past is something that's normal or maybe even just part of the job when you're working with electrical equipment, and perhaps not much we can do about it. But these shocks are dangerous, and they have the ability to still seriously injure someone. So as an industry, we really need to do better so that we don't have to have half of the people that are working with our electrical systems, dealing with what certainly could be a life-altering incident. So the truth is that there are things we can do that will have a significant benefit. Now a direct contact shock would typically occur when there's inadvertent movement with your hand or body part, and you come into contact with a wire or energized component. So your body then becomes the path to ground for the fault current and you receive a shock. You might think that you just have one really quick setting to adjust on that component, and you really don't want to take the extra time to run back to the supply to get rubber gloves. But inevitably, just as you're starting to work, a colleague walks in the room, calls your name. And you just turn your head ever so slightly, and that certainly can be enough to move your finger or hand and you make inadvertent contact with an energized component. Certainly, not something you meant to do, but these kind of accidents do happen. Now something else to keep in mind is that shock can occur from an indirect contact as well. So if you consider a conductor where the insulation has perhaps been worn away over several years due to vibration. Now eventually, that insulation can fail, which could expose a conductor, and it could come into contact with the metal railing. Now if the metal railing becomes energized, it could shock the next person who happens to come along and touch it. So while we do need to ensure we're providing proper training and effective training on shock protection, we must also use engineering controls and other devices to help limit that risk. So what contributes to the severity of a shock. So here, we're going to talk about 3 main factors that we'd like to review. The first is the path through the body. And this -- it does play a significant role as it determines whether the current is going through your heart muscle and perhaps which other organs or parts of your body could receive thermal injuries. Now you can see examples here of hand-to-hand contact or touch potential or foot to foot, which is stop -- sorry, step potential and hands to foot, which is touch/step potential. Now second, the magnitude of the current is also important, as you would expect. Now the fact that even small currents measured in tens of milliamps, if they're sustained, can be fatal. And depending on the path through the body, we'll have part of that effect of whether or not it would be fatal. Now the duration of the time of the shock is also an important factor for the resulting effect on the human body, just as I mentioned. Now there's a couple of charts coming up later in the presentation to further explain that relationship of current magnitude and time. On the left side here, you can see the magnitude of current that we're referring to. So a standard Class A GFCI has a trip level of 6 milliamps, which is below the let-go threshold. The let-go threshold would be when a person experiencing an electric shock loses their ability to let go of that object. So the current stimulates the nerves and the muscles that caused sustained contraction of the muscles. And this obviously is a very dangerous situation if there's no devices that are present to interrupt the current and prevent permanent injury. Now as the current increase is beyond the 20 and 30-milliamp levels, it can result in difficulty breathing; and at a level of 50 milliamps would come to fibrillation. So you can see that we're talking about current here. Now this is because the current magnitude is what we're really concerned about with shock. The voltage does certainly play a role. At higher voltages, it can break down the skin resistance but low voltage systems present just as much, if not a greater shock risk because of some of the complacency that people may have. So to put it all into perspective, the table here provides body resistance values. Now there can be a lot of variability between different individuals, including if the skin is cellist, has any open cuts or wet or dry because more than 99% of the body's resistance to the flow of electrical current is actually at the skin. And further details on those numbers are discussed in that safety report that we mentioned. Now looking at the highlighted row, if you imagine that you're working in a confined wet space and you happen to lose your balance, now you reach out and you grab a pipe to study yourself. And if you look at the chart, you could see your total resistance could be less than 500 ohms. Now as I mentioned before, is that pipe just happened to be energized due to a conductor insulation failure, even on a low-voltage system on a 240-volt application, that result in current would be in hundreds of milliamps, which is certainly more than enough to be fatal. So there's certainly other considerations as well such as PPE and clothing, but it just serves as an example to put this all into perspective for us. Now most industry reports say that electrical fatalities have steadily declined since NFPA70E became required. And if you look at the chart above, it's pretty clear that if you draw a line from 2003 to 2018, you really do have a declining slope. And 29 CFR updates were made, and you can see on the chart where that's aimed at, those were some of the first updates made in 20 years and added safety design criteria for electrical installations, so again, that was taken from NFPA70E. And one example was expanded GFCI protection of temporary wiring for maintenance and repair. So you can see those had a very significant impact. And there's been many good improvements made over this time. But if you look a bit closer, you can see that, that reduction in fatalities from 2004 to 2010 has really stagnated and has remained pretty flat since then. So still, almost every other day here in 2018, there was yet another family in the U.S. where a mother or father, son or daughter didn't make it home after work. Now to really frame this discussion, more than 90% of electrical fatalities among U.S. workers are due to electrical shock. And that number doesn't account for some of the injuries and fatalities that could be misclassified under a different cause. But that number certainly makes it clear that understanding and reducing shock injuries really has to be a top priority for the electrical industry if we expect to make improvements on these numbers. So in the survey that Littelfuse conducted, we found that more than 2/3 of respondents said that personnel in their facility do perform work on energized equipment. Now if we just take a moment to pause and remember that each of those occurrences could be an opportunity for a shock to occur. So it's worth considering why is energized work so prevalent? Now one of the most common reasons and responses is for diagnostics and for troubleshooting. A system that could be running, it -- you may need to do that in order to discover what the fault is and where the fault is. In many cases, even if you want to work deenergized, you might have to interact with energized equipment in order to accomplish that isolation to begin with. Companies may also say that they're not willing to shut down the equipment because of the production losses and the interruption it would have. In other cases, you may try to refuse work and take a stand if a project should be done deenergized, but in some cases, maybe you're threatened with being fired if you don't proceed. Now it could also be due to a person's overconfidence, where they don't think that there's any way they could make a mistake, that they're really sure but perhaps don't double-check that the equipment is not fed from a second source. And of course, it can also be inconvenient to arrange for proper shutdown of the equipment with proper isolation. And finally, working energized may just be what you've always done before, and there's never been an issue and why should we change now? So we certainly don't have time to discuss each of those points in today's webcast. But ultimately, we need to take a look at those to ensure that all possible measures are being taken to reduce the shock hazards in our facilities. Now just before I pass the mic over to Terry, we can take pause just for one more poll question. And so far, we've really talked about what an electric shock is and some of the effects. Now if you think back to electrical safety training you've received, how adequately do you think that, that training has covered electric shock hazards and how you need to deal with them. So if you can just take a moment to fill in that -- fill in some survey answers. It's -- with the effect of training, it's critical that it helps us to recognize a fault and give us a level of understanding and help some of the tools to reduce that hazard. So it's important to just analyze and understand what is our level of knowledge? And what are things we need to learn more about? I can get a few more people to put in some responses. Wait to I get just a couple more here and then I can proceed. [Voting]

Okay. So it looks like from the audience, the electrical safety training that most people have, they feel pretty confident about the ability to recognize electric shock hazard. So I'll ask Terry to maybe pick it up and take it from here.

Thanks, Mark. And that's an interesting segue to where I wanted to start off my portion of the webcast, just talk about the history of training, where I think those stats are on shock, I'm not sure if those are accurate. So let's go back in time and where we started with some training for workers back in -- from 1940 to 1960 American Electricians' Handbook. We actually trained workers to accept being shocked as part of their job. They became the voltage detector. So up to 250 volts AC, use your fingers or put a wire to your tongue and taste electricity. So the training started that way. Obviously, that's no longer acceptable. But I think even in current times, an apprentice was trained by an electrician, it's the right of passage to be shocked. It's part of the job. Obviously, that's not acceptable. But that's where things started, and I think there have been -- I know there have been lots of shocks, and I know there's been lots of shocks not reported, not only by electrical workers, but by nonelectrical workers as well. So I want to place emphasis on the fact that the shock hazard is all workers on a work site and a broad stroke here with respect to training and the lack of focus on the shock hazard. So right now, the statistics that Mark reported, I think, are even skewed because we still don't have all shocks being reported by all worker classifications on all work sites. So we also had OH&S regulations evolve, and that was a good thing in general, not only for the shock hazard, but other workplace hazards, and the responsibility level was increased by the employer. And obviously, workers using their body as a voltage detector would no longer be acceptable. Workers need to report the shocks. And I -- again, I still believe they are not. So we also had some obvious benefit of some safe work practice documents evolve and the NFP70E standard for electrical safety in the workplace published in 1979 in Canada. And being from Canada, we had Z462 only arrive and be published in 2008 and 70E and Z462 are currently technically harmonized, which is a good thing for North America as far as the work practice is evolving again. So in Canada, we've only had the benefit of a specific safer practices standard for 4 additions. And in the U.S., I think 70E is in its 12 to 13 addition with both additions of these being published again next year or later this year for 70E for the 2021 addition and Z462. So these have benefited us, but I believe what's happened is there's been a skew towards the arc flash hazards and less of a focus on the shock hazard. So these are good documents. They have benefited both shock and arc flash, but unfortunately, the focus has been skewed to arc flash. I wanted to place emphasis on the long-term effects of shock. And Mark mentioned this, and the safety report has quite a good coverage of this topic and a lot of detail on it because I don't think that this has been discussed. So electrical workers specifically, who have received a lot of shocks, low voltage, and again, not reported them and just shake it off and gone back to work. I think that later on in their life, they may not be aware that some of the potential effects that they're having that they don't relate them to the shocks. So the long-term effects are not well-known. And in Canada, there was some research completed at the St. John's Rehab in Ontario by Dr. Joel Fish about a decade ago. And they actually have a formal electrical injury program there where electricians can come in and receive treatment for being shocked and the long term effects. And I've just highlighted aches, pain, discomfort, memory loss, believe it or not, memory loss related to being shocked at work, and the story was one electrician couldn't remember how to get to work. Well, if you associate work with pain, then that may be why, right? So there is an exhaustive list of potential long-term effects for electricians, and they may not know later on in their life and when they're retired, that some of these problems are attributed to the shocks, and if they never reported the shocks, there could be no insurance coverage. So that's another sort of detail here with respect to shock. Now as far as statistics, Mark presented some statistics. This is another report that was published in 2015 by the Fire Protection Research Foundation under the NFPA. And they took electrical incident statistics from multiple sources, and I'm only placing emphasis on 1 item reported, which was the total number of electrical incident fatalities. And again, this sends the message that shock needs a lot more priority. For a 20-year period, I think there was 5,587 electrical fatalities, 99% of those were electrocutions. So almost 1 every day, right, based on this report in that time frame. And I still believe in my opinion that in North America, there's at least 1 electrocution every day related to a shock, whereas the arc flash burn injury leading to a fatality would only be 1%. So I'm not discounting that arc flash burns aren't happening, this is strictly just looking at the fatality statistic. Again, that tells us that shock needs attention, and it means more attention in my opinion than it's been receiving. Another shock report that the Technical Safety British Columbia and British Columbia, Canada provided and reported out in 2019, was similar to the Littelfuse survey and safety report. And it came up with some of the same results as why electricians are being shocked and they identified and categorized it as risk factors related to societal, sectoral, organizational, interpersonal and individual issues. And Mark had highlighted some of the reasons why specifically electricians are shocked. So this is a really good -- another place to get some information. They have another report and an infographic that identifies some of their results. But this is an interesting specific that I don't think many people would have leveraged, as I attend the IEEE electrical safety workshop every year now since 2006. And when I look back at the papers here, very quickly, there was a statistic from 1992 to 2010, it segregated the topics of the papers and presentations. And I just highlighted 3 items, that 16 of those focused on electrical incident statistics and injury research, 30 directly focused on the arc flash hazards, but only 1 directly focused on the shock hazard. So again, statistics here and even the focus of this conference, and again 2010 forward, I did not review the papers to see how many more on shock. But I think we probably will see a skewing where the arc flash hazard has overwhelmed the agenda, and we need more focus on shock across the board. The nonelectrical worker issue relates to portable cord-and-plug connected electrical equipment and extension cords. And when I've been out in the field and working with companies, I focus on all workers, and this problem is still significant. All workers will use extension cords and portable cord and plug connected to the electrical equipment on a work site, but I continue to see electrician's tape as the universal repair tool. And you can't damage a cord and tape it up. It is no longer approved, and there's a shock risk there that's real, except we haven't trained these workers. We haven't advised the nonelectrical worker significantly enough or frequently enough to manage portable cord and plug-connected electrical equipment extension cords. And on the top of GFCI, I think that we have a problem where GFCI potentially are not used when they should be used as well. So training blind spots, electrical safety training blind spots, well, I've already commented that arc flash has overwhelmed the topic of training and the electrical literacy workshop, and even the title of training is arc flash awareness or arc flash training, and it doesn't even include the word shock in the title of the training. To me, that's indicative of, again, the focus being on arc flash. It's very easy to show a whole bunch of arc flash videos and shocking on. And it's why don't we have shock leverage? Why don't we have an incident victim that's been shocked and show their interview and why they were shocked and why they were working energized? And what controls they didn't have in place, and thus they received a shock. Again, all workers are exposed to shock, electrical workers, nonelectrical workers. We need some level of awareness training or more detailed training with a focus on shock. And again, the electrical worker training, we need a balance of the information. Don't get me wrong, there's shock in the training. It's just that it's not, in my opinion, adequate. The worker walks out of the training with arc flash on their brain instead of arc flash and shock, and I need to manage both, and probably some more focus on shock. So we need less focus on arc flash and more focus on shock. I want to talk about risk assessment briefly. And I've just put a Snagit on the screen for when you search online and search for risk assessment, go to images, you see these matrices. And I think this is another gap in the training is that NFP70E and Z462 require training on a risk assessment procedure, and it's pretty explicit and detailed in both of those standards. But when you see this, you might be overwhelmed and these risk assessment matrices are all valid, they're all different. Risk assessment is a valid tool, and it means to be trained at some level, so the worker understands that it's a tool to make decisions because ultimately, that's what this is. It's a tool to make decisions on the application of the hierarchy of risk-control methods to eliminate as the #1 priority. And that is a key focus of 70E and Z462, is we want a limited exposure to arc flash and shock hazards, if we can. We want to use higher order controls or more effective controls, substitution and engineering safety by design. And that's again at the employer or the electrical equipment owner level that those decisions have to be made. And then the lower order controls, warning signs and barricading, administrative controls, training and procedures and then PPEs last. And wrapped around all of this, I'm a huge advocate that companies need electrical safety programs. And it's through that electrical safety program that they can manage the risk assessment, implement the risk assessments, work task based and then identify the hierarchy of risk controls that they want applied, and then they have to follow up to ensure the worker groups, qualified electrical worker, nonelectrical worker implement the appropriate controls to achieve residual risk as low as reasonably practical. So this is a graphic that I really like, and I give credit to Lanny Floyd and then [ B. Liams and G. Popoff ] for this graphic. And really, what I like is that it expands on the higher order controls, specifically engineering safety by design and another coin phrase, prevention through design. And specific to shock, I've just highlighted insulation guarding, finger safe designs, GFCIs. There's other things we can do to make the equipment so that there's an elimination of the shock hazard exposure or we reduce risk. But what I really like is breaking out the engineering safety by design into minimizing, simplifying passive controls and active controls. So I would classify GFCIs as an active control, right? And again, we put in place something that helps deal with the performance of the worker, their qualification to competency as an active control. So I just wanted to highlight that prevention through design and again, a different way to think about the engineering safety by design or potential through design aspect. So this is just a specific 3x3 matrix to arc flash and shock hazards. And again, it's not complicated. It's making sure the worker understands the potential severity of injured damage to health from the shock or arc flash and then the like of occurrence. And really between the 2, we need to put more focus on like of occurrence and less focus on PPE, and that gets us to those higher order controls as well. So again, that's just an example of a specific 3x3 matrix, but applying it to the arc flash and shock hazards directly. I wanted to highlight in 70E and Z462, the shock risk assessments. They are technically harmonized, they're identical, but they're processed that it's not complicated. Workers are assigned a job with discrete work tasks. The discrete work tasks may expose them to shock, that workaround, the employer need to understand, again, the potential severity of injured damage to health and the like of occurrence and equally treat those. But I personally think we need more focus on like of occurrence, right? PPE would be the last line of defense. And then the outcome of the risk assessment for shock is determining additional protective measures, which includes use of shock-related PPE tools and equipment, work practices, right, as well. So again, this is a great process, and the practice side of this, these standards provide us the basis for, again, shock risk assessment and arc flash risk assessment, obviously, I'm emphasizing the shock in the context of this webcast. So as far as the shock risk assessment, some of the PPE issues that I've seen is the rubber insulating gloves. So we determine additional protective measures as an outcome, the rubber insulating gloves are a requirement, if -- when we establish that there's a limit in restrictive approach boundary, but the challenges are -- is worker acceptance. Over the years that I've been involved with this, the workers say, we've never worn these before, they're uncomfortable, they -- my hands are wet, I don't have dexterity. So that's one of the challenges with this PPE. And again, you've got to train the workers you've got to get them the gloves. The challenges, once we get the workers the gloves, what I find is that they're not dialectically tested in the field to the minimum 6-month test frequency, right? So that's a challenge. In the Littelfuse safety report, it documents some of the respondents with respect to testing. And it says that 1/4 of the respondents, they don't even test the gloves at all, right? So it's not a matter of forgetting to or not having the 6-month test scheduled, they just never tested them at all when they receive them or after they receive them and put them in service. So this is a concern with respect, again, the additional protective measure for shock and specifically the rubber insulating gloves or leather protectors. Another element of the shock PPE is insulated hand tools. And what I find is that there's a couple of problems here. The barrier is they're expensive. They're quite expensive compared to normal tools. So workers may not have procured them themselves if they had been provided some money to do that or the employer hasn't provided them either. We do need justification for use of these tools. And even the approved mark, so I find that when I ask electrician, what's the approved mark, for an insulated hand tool for North America, they don't know that it's the double triangle with the voltage. So again, we need more focus and attention on the shock hazard being identified. And again, the additional protective measures being managed. One of the last items I wanted to place emphasis on was these probe extenders. Again, so as far as PPE, it is our last line of defense, we want to place focus on those higher order controls when we complete the overall risk assessment. But this piece of PPE, I call -- this is PPE to me, and again, there's a lack of awareness of it. They take the workers' hand out of the box. So again, we use distance in this case. There still is a shock risk because the guard is not at the end of these probes -- sorry, at the other end, it's where it normally is. So again, but I just want to place attention on this particular PPE is not available. To end and pass it back to Mark, though, I really want to emphasize that the risk assessment procedure in 70E and Z462 was a powerful tool to make decisions. We want to focus on elimination on some of those higher order controls, substitution engineering safety by design. And I'll hand it back to Mark, and he can follow up and discuss, again, some of those higher order level of controls for shock for workers.

Thanks, Terry. So one very effective way of reducing shock hazards in industrial facilities is by adopting GFCIs. And Terry did refer to that a couple of times in his slides there. So if you refer back to the hierarchy of controls that Terry showed on one of those slides, it would be in engineering control. And the data shows that there's a direct drop in electrocutions that we're seeing in the home since GFCIs were mandated in the 1970s. And if you translate that to the industrial space, an industrial 3-phase GFCI could have a similar impact for industrial circuits. Now as shown here on the slide in the graphic, if you were to come into contact with an energized component, there would be a ground fault return path for current to flow through your body and give you a shock. And the current transformer, that's shown there as #2 in the box, that current transformer, that's inside the GFCI can measure that imbalance and would initiate a trip through the integrated interrupting device. And that's really the difference between the GFCI and the standard ground fault relay is that in the GFCI, the interrupting device is part of the package, and it's vigorously tested to meet the trip level, trip time requirements for people protection as a total package. And just on this note, when you're looking at products in the market in this space, it really is then important to make sure you look at, make sure it's you UL-listed, UL-recognized, to the UL 943 or UL 943C standards, which are the GFCI standards. And finally, if you look at #4 there, you can also see an additional function that's built into an industrial GFCI, called a grounding check. And I'll talk more about this in a few moments, but I just wanted to highlight it here since it shows everything as a cohesive diagram. Now historically, GFCIs were really only targeted for systems 150 volts line to ground with a 6-milliamp trip, and that's aimed at the residential and commercial applications. So UL did recognize the demand for GFCIs on 480-volt and 600-volt equipment with trip levels that could better accommodate industrial equipment. So about a little less than 10 years ago, released UL 943C. Now this standard created 3 new GFCI classes, Class C and D and E. And this was intended to provide some much-needed shock protection for industrial circuits. Now the NEC mandates GFCIs for many different applications, and it continues to grow with every code cycle. Now the NEC currently defines the GFCI specifically as a Class A device listed to UL 943. So have that definition taken from the most recent version there, NEC 2020 on the screen. Now this is one area where we do look forward to future changes with the NEC to include references to these newer Class C and Class D GFCIs, so that we can ensure industrial facilities can take advantage of those tools to reduce hazards and meet their GFCI requirements. I also put the Canadian electrical code there, which is the latest version in 2018. And the definitions in there already defined a GFCI separate from a Class A GFCI. So that means that industrial Class C and D GFCIs can be applied to industrial circuits in Canada where needed to provide personnel safety and meet the GFCI requirements. Now before, I mentioned the relationship with current and time. So we're coming back to that point here now. So the trip level and trip time of a GFCI must follow an inverse time curve, which is shown here on the screen. So that essentially means the greater the current, the faster the trip that's required in order to ensure that there's proper protection for people. And there's a white dotted line there to show a minimum point on the curve that a fault current of 300 milliamps or more must trip in 20 milliseconds to ensure safety. And you can see the formula there is listed on the screen as well. Now the first part -- yes, so as I said, the first part of the presentation, I did mention that both magnitude and time play a role there. And so this shows how they relate to each other. And the curve is written into UL 943, 943C, so that's not based on one particular manufacturer. That's what's written into the UL standard. And so that is for both -- that's for the Class A as well as Class C and D and E GFCIs as well. Now we have indicated there on the graph -- or on the chart, you can see the trip level chosen for the Class C and D industrial GFCI is 20 milliamps. So that 20-milliamp trip level will allow industrial equipment to operate even if there's a small amount of leakage current that could be present, but it still ensures tripping occurs quickly enough before personnel are at risk. And we also show a data point there for the EGFPD, which stands for equipment ground-fault protection device, and that's a device defined as having an adjustable setting range. So here it's shown from 600 to 100 milliamps. So it does follow the same curve in that those higher trip levels would have a faster trip level -- the higher trip levels would have a faster trip time, sorry, and provide an effective form of that protection. But we are not able to call those devices GFCIs, and that's part of the UL requirements that's written into the standard. Now whether you have heard of these devices or not, industrial GFCIs are available on the market now. So the industrial Shock-Block from Littelfuse was the first special-purpose GFCI that was available on the market, listed to UL 943C for Class C and D. And as you can see in the photo there, it's offered in the NEMA 4X enclosure. So it can be mounted on the factory floor or outdoors, wherever it's needed by the point of utilization. If you prefer to install it within an existing cabinet, it's also an open chassis -- open chassis model. Now the load rating of the device, as you can see there, is 100 amps for 3-phase systems from 208 volt up to 600 volts as well as a short circuit current rating at 50 kA to be sure it doesn't decrease the short circuit current rating of your branch circuit. And as a safety device, some of the things also designed in is an under-volted brownout and chatter detection to make sure that the internal contact is healthy. Now the Shock-Block line began its life in Hollywood, in movie and TV sets and even had an Oscar for technical achievement. But now it's available as an industrial product for Class B and Class D GFCI. Now one of the other things I mentioned in the previous slide there was that grounding check function. So with a cord connected piece of equipment, that flexible cord, and you can see it shown as portable cable on the slide there, that includes the safety ground between the mobile equipment and the power source. So in an industrial environment, you can pretty easily imagine the worker could be holding or touching a piece of equipment. And if there's a break in that ground return conductor and a ground-fault occurs, then inside that equipment, the frame of the equipment could become energized and the ground-fault current would not be flowing. So that means the GFCI would not be able to detect that fault. So the ground check feature ensures that there is a low resistance ground path that's in place and valid from the equipment back to the GFCI so that the ground is there and can do its job. Now the ground check function is actually mandated in the UL 943C for these Class C and D GFCIs that we've been talking about and is, of course, included then in the Shock-Block GFCI that we just looked at. Now here's a really interesting note. If you use the assured equipment grounding program in your facility, it's outlined in OSHA and NEC 590.6. So all of the manual work that's done in the continuity test and the terminal connection test and all the documentation that goes with it, all of that can be eliminated, or should we say, replaced if you're using an industrial GFCI. This is because that industrial GFCI, not only does the GFCI work of interrupting the circuit when there's leakage current, but it contains that ground check that will continuously check the equipment ground to be sure that it's grounded at all times. So that also provides some very good savings in that way. So to recap the presentation, we've talked through a few different points here. And the first is that electric shocks are very prevalent in the industry and are responsible for over 90% of electrical fatalities. And I think even the survey we had here showed that half of the people on this call themselves have received a shock. Now this is really not okay. There can be long-term effects to the person receiving the shock and their families. And there are a variety of things that we can and need to do better at in order to reduce electric shock injuries. And so this starts with doing a proper assessment of the risks, as Terry was talking about, and taking steps to effectively mitigate those and choosing engineering controls as much as possible such as industrial GFCIs in order to do that. So I wanted to thank you very much for your attention and for going through this important topic with us. So we'll take a second here to open the Q&A and see if we can answer some of the questions that have come in over the course of the webinar.

Now any questions we don't get to in the time, we have tracked of all these questions. So we'll make sure that those answers find their way back to you. But let's just take a second to dig into some of those. Now I see one question here was asking, can you comment on the significance of the pictures on the cover pages of the NFPA 70E revisions? And there were some conversations that hierarchical safety management being the theme of some of the most recent additions of NFPA 70E. And does that image tell a story of our electrical safety management and focus progression? So I think that might be referring to the hierarchy of control that's on the cover. Terry, did you maybe want to field part of that question?

Yes, Mark. And I think the answer is yes. The evolution of NFPA 70E has moved to ensuring that it aligns with occupational health and safety management system requirements and the inclusion of the risk-assessed procedure, and therefore, a focus on the hierarchy of risk control methods. And we should be taking a top-down perspective, not bottom-up. But unfortunately, what's happened in the industry is a bottom-up. Employers have sent their electrical workers on training, purchase PPE, but they have no documented policies, practice or procedural requirements in electrical safety program and haven't focused on the high order controls that both you and I discussed. So definitely, the cover of NFPA 70E with the triangle and the hierarchy of risk control methods, elimination is the priority. NFPA 70E and CSA-Z462 completely emphasize that as well. We have to establish an electrical safe work condition. If we can't, we have to have justification for energized electrical work. The individual work tests have to have a risk-assessed procedure and a shock risk assessment and an arc flash risk assessment completed for them so that we can then apply those hierarchy of risk control methods. Unfortunately, like I said, substitution and engineering safety by design have to be at the owner/employer level, right? So specifying what Mark was discussing was these new UL GFCI requirements, that has to be at the front end. So yes, 70E has evolved, and it does require this detailed risk assessment procedure and the application of the hierarchy of risk control methods in your shock and arc flash risk assessments.

Yes. Thanks, Terry. Another question I have here is with this 600-volt GFCI work for portable electrical welding machines. And I can answer that question. And the answer is yes. So that product has been used on portable welders before. As I mentioned, there is the built-in grounding check, which is one consideration when doing the installation. But certainly, it would be suitable for portable electrical welding machines. Now there's a couple here related to the code and relating to the shock issue in commercial and industrial installations. And I think some of those questions came in maybe midpoint to the presentation. But I can comment that in NEC in particular, in 210.8, where it covers GFCIs, there has been a steady progression. And even in NEC 2020, there's an addition of GFCIs now for 240-volt circuit in the home for dryers and ranges. So there's a steady march forward on trying to provide more and more shock protection. Now in the commercial space, the commercial kitchens, for example, are now required for Class A GFCIs up to 100 amps on their 3-phase circuits. So in NEC, there's some references made there that are continued to move forward. And there's others -- of course, there's many different references. So we can follow up after the call with a few additional references there to talk about. Okay. So looking at a couple of other questions here. Can you explain how the ground health is monitored? Okay. So that's another related to the industrial GFCI. And the -- what the unit does is provide a signal that goes out on an insulated pilot wire. So this signal would travel down to the load and then return on the grounding wire that's in the cable. So this requires a termination device. And if you looked at the drawing when we had it up on the slide, there is a Zener termination diode that's shown there. So that determination diode relative to this product. But it needs to see a termination at the other side, and that makes sure that there's a low resistance path returning from the remote equipment back to the Shock-Block. And so it uses an additional wire to send out the signal to that initial conductor that would travel to the load. Now here's one question. Terry, maybe you can help with this one asking about -- if it's possible to attach a work activity to the risk assessment table. I'm not sure if that's specific enough that you can address it, but do you have any thoughts on that particular question?

So the way that I frame the risk assessment requirement of NFPA 70E and Z462, it's work task based. So the standard is technically harmonized. So they focus on work tasks. So the work task or what the risk assessment should be completed for. And in the 2018 editions of 70E and Z462, under the arc flash risk assessment, there was some tables that were moved around from the arc flash PPE category table method to the arc flash risk assessment. So in 70E, it's Table 130.5(E), and I always get that one mixed up, I believe it's C. And it's Table 3 in Z462. And they provide a list of discrete work task. I think there's 31 of them. So what I recommend is that, well, based on the standards work task face on that table, you could individually complete committee-based risk assessments generically against that work task list. Now those tables are for life of occurrence of an arcing fault and an arc flash based on equipment condition, but you can equally apply evaluating the shock hazard against the work task listed and its expectation of the potential for exposed energized conductors and circuit parts related to the work task. So for instance, doing a voltage measurement, we would anticipate that the hinge door is open or the bolt-on cover is off and the worker is going in with their hands. And if their hands are bare, there's an inadvertent movement risk and potential shocks. So to summarize, 70E and Z462 are or work task-based standards. The overall risk assessment procedure should be completed in my opinion against discrete work tasks generically. Then those risk assessments should be completed by what I call the electrical safety committee, management sponsorship, supervision, safety, engineering, if you have it, representation of workers. You do that in an office environment, committee-based. And then the outcome would be what hierarchy of risk control methods do we want to apply. And the outcome, again, would be do we need to look at some higher-order controls, substitution and injuring safety by design as a priority, which you should, again, considering that for a lot of those -- most of those work tasks, we can eliminate exposure. So I want to be clear that I do want us to eliminate exposure but that we will need energized electrical work to be performed by qualified and competent electrical workers. And we just want to use the tools in 70E and Z462 and specifically the risk assessment tools to determine proactively what do we need to do to reduce risk, this residual risk level that I mentioned, and as low as reasonably practicable, it doesn't mean 0 risk. I believe that for shock, we can potentially achieve 0 risk. But for arc flash, we can't because for arc flash, there will be some residual burn injury based on the performance of the arc flash PPE. So long-winded answer, but it's work task based to individual. And I recommend qualitative risk assessments on generic work tasks, and 70E and Z462 give us a table that we can use for the starting point for those work tasks.

Okay. Thanks, Terry. Yes, there's a really good list of questions here. So I'll pick a couple of more. There's a couple of questions asking about the Class C and D and how the UL 943C curve was obtained. And so I can add a little bit of color to that in that the curve that we showed on the screen, the inverse time curve, that's the same curve that's used for Class A and Class C and D. Now those levels were chosen -- the 6 milliamps for Class A GFCI is below the let-go threshold. And when you look at how do we know how much current is suitable, and when we talk about tripping fast enough so there's no permanent injury, how do we know what that is, now there is an IEC standard that shows you can overlay on top of that, that shows where the risk factors are based on quite a different -- numbers of different research that show what magnitudes and what time duration of current is going to be at what level of risk to people. So if you overlay some of the information from those various IEC references and there's an IEC standard, which I can send after, it does show those time durations based on those levels -- based on those current levels and where you should be if you want to stay in the range of not indicating any permanent damage for people. So there is a science behind that. That goes a couple of different layers deep. There's one here about residential GFCI and if they have built in ground checks similar to the industrial GFCIs. And the answer on that is that, no, the Class A GFCIs for residential do not have that ground check function. That was something that was added in the UL 943C standard. I think we have time maybe for one more quick question. I think there was a question here, Terry, maybe you can give one more minute to. If touch-safe connections were considered safe as far as shock hazard was concerned.

So in one of the slides I indicated for shock, if we can have more insulation and guarding and finger-safe components, then the shock hazard is eliminated when workers have to go into the equipment energized. It doesn't eliminate the arcing fault and arc flash. So we've got to make sure we evaluate the shock hazard related to the work task separate from the arcing fault probability and the arc flash hazard, right? So more insulation and guarding with respect to the shock hazard is eliminating exposure. So again, I'm not sure of the context of the question, but -- and don't get me wrong, we've had insulation and guarding, and we've had finger-safe components. But I think we could move in the direction of having more insulation installed depending on the electrical equipment and where we expect the worker to have to go to complete the diagnostics and troubleshooting work tasks or testing for absence of voltage when they're doing isolation. So we can eliminate the shock hazard, in my opinion. And if we can't, then we will have rubber insulating gloves and other protectors on and have to use insulated hand tools. That would be a separate issue as well, if there's specification for insulated hand tools. So I'm specifically talking about, obviously, electrical workers and low-voltage electrical equipment. And that insulation, guarding and finger-safe components have been in our designs, but we should put more focus on can we do a better job of eliminating the exposed conductor and circuit part. And again, don't get me wrong, there's been evolution in the designs that have occurred in the last 10 years that I've been specifically focusing on electrical safety, and they will continue. So as we move through time, substitution and prevention through design or safety by design have been ramping up significantly. And I think we still have a long way to go with respect to both the shock hazard and the arcing fault, arc flash hazard in those 2 areas of the hierarchy of risk control methods.

Well, thanks, Terry. So I think that's everything that we can squeeze into the time frame that we had here. Really appreciate everybody spending the time with us. And sorry that we couldn't get to all the questions. There was a lot of great questions coming in and still coming in. But please rest assured that all of these are tracked and recorded on our side so that we can come back to you with a complete answer after the call. So please feel free to contact us with any other questions that might come up that you might think of after you hang up, and we'll respond back to you as well. And thanks very much again for going through this topic with us.