Council of Gas Detection and Environmental Monitoring

CoGDEM (UK) is the Council of Gas Detection and Environmental Monitoring, a trade association with a membership of around sixty companies involved in the gas detection industry.  We are pleased to have ETP (the publishers of this IET magazine) as an Associate Member, so we place a regular article of news from the gas detection industry in IET magazine.

Coincidentally, both CoGDEM and ETP celebrate their 40th birthdays this year, as does the Health and Safety at Work Act.

The UK’s Health and Safety Executive (HSE) is keen to publicise that 2014 marks 40 years since the Health and Safety at Work Act received Royal Assent. It has subsequently protected millions of British workers, and driven sharp reductions in incidents of occupational death, serious injury and ill health.

Before the 1974 Act there was a host of different regulations – some industries swamped with prescriptive rules and others with little or no regulation at all. The Act that emerged from the 1972 Robens Report swept away detailed and prescriptive industry regulations; it created a flexible system where regulations describe goals and principles, supported by codes of practice and guidance.

Forty years on, the Health and Safety at Work Act has demonstrated it can be applied to new responsibilities and new demands, creating the framework for people to come home safe and well from a day’s work in any sector of the economy.

CoGDEM was formed in 1974 by the UK's leading gas detector manufacturers of the day to become the co-ordinating body of the gas detection industry, representing the collective interest to Government, BSI, and other trade and professional bodies.  Prior to CoGDEM’s formation, there had been no mechanism to produce consistent standards for the performance levels of gas detection instruments. This was of particular importance to the industry regulators in the mid-1970s, with great expansion of North Sea oil and gas exploration and production occurring simultaneously with the global oil crisis.

CoGDEM’s member companies are involved with industrial, commercial and domestic gas detection and analysis.  As well as instrument manufacturers, CoGDEM has members who develop and manufacture gas sensors, produce bottled gases for calibration, certify and test gas detectors, distribute, install and train users all over the world.