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This chapter examines how the content of standards is formed and discusses the knowledge base of standards, using the International Organization for Standardization's (ISO) 9000 series of quality standards as an empirical example. The ISO 9000 standards have influenced many other standards related to quality and the management of organizations. This standard is described in more detail and the assumptions about organizations from which the standard was developed are considered. The standard is then compared, first with scholarly thinking on how organizations function, and then with the popular management culture.

This chapter looks at the conditions that led pharmaceutical manufacturers in Kenya to invest in the production of a broader range of drugs, and to improve quality standards beyond what was required by local regulations. It begins with the contentious negotiations over Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS), which resulted in donors providing to some developing countries not only markets, as they did in the 1980s, but also monitoring and mentoring. In Kenya, a new market of interest to local manufacturers, for anti-AIDS and antimalarial drugs, was created when the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria—among other donors—did not a priori exclude local manufacturers from tenders. To participate in these tenders, however, drugs manufacturers had to receive WHO prequalification (PQ) confirming that their drugs were produced following international, rather than only local, quality standards. This monitoring gave local producers an incentive to improve their manufacturing practices. In turn, development agencies offered training and other forms of mentoring—giving local producers the means to learn how to produce drugs following these higher quality standards.

This chapter begins by charting the developments in housing policy that have shaped the regulatory frameworks for housing quality standards as well as identifying the most significant socioeconomic and environmental influences to impact on access within the context of housing quality and design. It illustrates how within the European house-building industry, significant social and economic indicators have influenced the trend towards deregulation. However, the growth of awareness of disability rights on an international scale, with disabled people increasingly calling for recognition of a model of disability which takes account of the ‘disabling’ effects of social and environmental barriers called for a trend toward reregulation and for new housing to meet the minimal standard of ‘visitability’. Further, the chapter identifies the key factors which led to the repositioning of the formerly discrete concept of ‘accessibility’ into the central debate on the future of housing quality criteria.

The effects of climate change on air quality are difficult to model due to the large number of unpredictable variables. Hotter temperatures favor ozone production. Higher atmospheric water content may blunt this effect in some regions. Higher levels of natural volatile organic compounds (VOCs), such as terpenes from plants, are likely to act synergistically with anthropogenic VOCs to favor ozone production. Droughts increase wildfire risks that produce particulate pollution and carbon monoxide, a VOC involved in ozone production. Some models predict increased ozone concentrations in many urban settings. Future revisions of National Ambient Air Quality Standards, a process driven by politics and science, should consider these effects.

This chapter examines the evolution of the institutions that have regulated production of tequila for the last sixty years, showing how negotiations over these institutions and changes made to them are tied to broader conflicts and underlying inequalities. The denomination of origin (DO) for tequila, established in 1974, defines where tequila can be produced; the quality standard, first established in 1949, outlines how to produce tequila; and the Tequila Regulatory Council, created in 1994, verifies compliance. Many people link tequila’s startling success in the global marketplace to these regulatory institutions. This chapter shows, however, how the DO and the quality standard adopt a narrow and technical definition of quality. They fail to protect tequila’s tie to a specific place or any particular practices. Tequila companies engage in marketing efforts that fetishize tradition and status, while at the same time, tequila has become less and less recognizable as a distinctive Mexican product.

This chapter focuses specifically on drinking water supply, which is divided into national, state, rural, and urban areas given the multiplicity of relevant instruments. The first section focuses on rural drinking supply. It reproduces the main national-level policy instrument in this area, the National Rural Drinking Water Programme Guidelines, 2013, select state-level legislation (panchayat acts) and instruments highlighting the push for reforms and privatisation in the sector. The second section focuses on urban drinking water supply. It reproduces extracts of a national statute and select state-level legal instruments. It also reproduces legal instruments seeking to foster reforms in urban water provisioning. The third section looks at drinking water supply in specific contexts and highlights select legal instruments concerning schools, post-disaster management, and work places. The last section highlights the issue of drinking water quality and quantity standards, a crucial dimension that has not been given yet the place it deserves in legislation.

This chapter focuses on the improvement of air quality in the United States. Laws such as the Clean Air Act (CAA), signed in 1970, resulted in a drastic reduction in air pollution. Since then, emissions have decreased by 50%. Despite these advances, adverse health effects associated with long-term exposure to air pollution continue. Researchers examined the health effects of pollution in a nationwide cohort of 61 million Medicare beneficiaries from 2000 to 2012. They created maps by linking Medicare mortality data, zip codes, and previously published estimates of ozone and fine particle pollutants (PM2.5). The study’s authors found that long-term exposures to fine particle pollutants and ozone, even at levels below current nationally “acceptable” standards, were associated with an increased risk of death. Persons with low incomes showed the highest risks associated with exposures. Vast improvements in air quality have been made in the past decades in the United States, but this study shows that air quality adhering to National Ambient Air Quality Standards still exposes Americans to levels of pollution that can be lethal over many years of exposure. Thus, air quality standards must be revisited in order to alleviate the burden on the most vulnerable populations.

The EU natural gas system has been developed since the 1960s, following discovery of the Groningen gas field. Climate change and security of supply challenges are affecting the natural gas market, provoking greener innovation including the introduction of renewable gases, such as biogas, which needs to be converted to biomethane (natural gas quality) before injection into the natural gas system and transported cross-border. This chapter examines the legal framework on EU and national level. Special attention is paid to: the extent to which biogas/biomethane is considered a renewable energy source; safety and quality standards; access and connection rules. National gas quality standards may, however, prove to be an obstacle for transportation cross-border. In addition, there is a trend towards cross-border contractual trade in biomethane and slowly emerging organizational developments facilitating cross-border trade in biomethane.

This chapter focuses on water quality violations in America. Most Americans have access to safe drinking water. However, there are pockets of American communities that are afflicted with high levels of contaminated water. In 2015, almost 10% of Americans were drinking contaminated water that violated water quality standards. The chapter then evaluates research at the University of California, Irvine, which examined water quality violations across the United States from 1982 to 2015. Researchers analyzed geographic and temporal patterns, with the goal of helping state enforcement agencies focus their attention on areas at high risk of contamination. The researchers cite decreasing population size and incomes as common obstacles faced by rural populations trying to follow water purification standards. Indeed, rural towns often rely on outside funding and low-interest government loans to support infrastructure to correct water quality violations. However, as of June 2017, over $600 million in grant funding was cut from Environmental Protection Agency drinking water programs. Such cuts, coupled with attempted environmental deregulation, threaten the public’s health.

This chapter examines how fair trade operates in the specialty coffee market. More specifically, it considers how the formally defined (certified) fair trade market is linked to the specialty coffee market and the market consisting of vendors who essentially market what they might call “fairer than fair trade” coffee. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork conducted in a coffee-producing community in southern Costa Rica in 1995, 1997–1998, and 2005, the chapter explores how the fair trade market has come to be part of the specialty coffee market, adopting its quality standards and how the fair trade market has influenced both the terms of trade and the rhetoric of the specialty coffee market. It also explores the ways in which various coffee vendors manipulate the content of the conflict between activism and market orientation in the fair trade market to their own advantage in the marketplace of coffee rather than the marketplace of ideas.

According to the International Organization for Standardization (ISO), the ‘Medical laboratories—Requirements for quality and competence (ISO 15189:2012) BS EN ISO 15189:2012’ accreditation is defined as ‘a procedure by which an authoritative body gives formal recognition that an organization is competent to carry out specific tasks’. Accreditation is delivered by the ‘competent authority’ based on a set of defined standards and the continual internal audit of the laboratory processes and infrastructure against these standards to achieve conformance. Additionally, the ‘competent authority’ periodically undertakes assessments to ensure compliance with the standards. These assessments vary in frequency and nature depending upon the assessment body. In some instances (e.g. UK Accreditation Service, UKAS), the assessments are annual and based on a four- year cycle covering the whole laboratory repertoire and infrastructure. The HSE is responsible for the inspection and licencing of microbiological containment level 3 and 4 facilities. The HTA is responsible for legal registration of laboratories that process and store human tissue, and is mainly histology related. The MHRA provides guidelines on good laboratory practice, good clinical practice, good clinical laboratory practice, and good manufacturing practice, largely around clinical trial work. It is also responsible for accreditation of blood transfusion laboratories. Finally, it provides guidance on the In Vitro Diagnostic Medical Device Directive (IVDMDD, 98/ 79/ EC) and the regulation of medical ‘devices’ including diagnostic devices, where a ‘device’ is defined as including reagent kits and analytical platforms. EFI provides guidance and standards for transplantation and tissue typing laboratories across Europe. Until 2009, CPA provided accreditation for the majority of UK pathology services. CPA was acquired by the UK Accreditation Service in 2009. UKAS is a government- appointed national accreditation body for the UK that is responsible for certification, testing, inspection, and calibration services, and is the competent authority for all ISO standards, not just pathology. It covers various sectors, including healthcare, food production, energy supply, climate change, and personal safety. The majority of UK pathology services will be UKAS ISO15189 accredited by 2018, including transitional ‘dual’ CPA standards/ ISO15189 accreditation between 2015 and 2018. It also provides ISO22870:2006 accreditation that is point of care specific, as well as ISO17025:2005, which applies to calibration standards.

This chapter traces the origins of tequila and mezcal. The first mezcals were produced in western Mexico over four hundred years ago. Distillation of agave spirits spread throughout western Mexico, including to the town of Tequila, where tequila gets its name. Especially over the last century, the paths of tequila, produced mainly in Jalisco, and mezcal, produced throughout rural Mexico, have diverged. Tequila is now made in huge, industrial factories, while thousands of small mezcal producers continue to make mezcal using tradition methods. Tequila and mezcal are both protected by denominations of origin, which restrict production to certain regions, and by quality standards that ensure their safety and authenticity. Growing global demand for Mexico’s two most famous spirits—in part, a result of this regulatory infrastructure—has shaped the lives of thousands of farmers, workers, and producers, leading to fame and fortune for a handful, while excluding and marginalizing many others.

This chapter illustrates how context shapes demand, and uses the boundlessness of human desire—an aspect that Keynes was quick to dismiss—as an example. Keynes seems to have believed that context mattered only for goods that “lift us above,” or “make us feel superior to, our fellows.” Like most other economists, he believed that demands originating from such feelings are, at most, a minor component of overall economic activity. The chapter goes on to show the relativity of quality standards, and posits that, by placing the desire to outdo others at the heart of his description of the category of goods whose demands are shaped by context, Keynes confined that category to the periphery. There are no obvious limits on the extent to which quality standards can escalate, since the richer we become, the more we are willing and able to pay for memorable experiences.

This chapter describes the adverse effects of both outdoor air pollution and indoor air pollution. Various ambient air pollutants are described as well as their adverse health effects, including acute and chronic respiratory disorders, cardiac disorders, cerebrovascular disease, and cancer. A section deals with National Ambient Air Quality Standards of the Environmental Protection Agency for particulate matter, sulfur dioxide, ozone, oxides of nitrogen, and carbon monoxide. Another section describes exposure assessment. The chapter also describes various measures to control hazardous air pollutants and prevent disorders related to air pollution. In addition, a section features indoor air pollution, including pollution due to burning of biomass for cooking and heat.

This chapter examines the explicit conventions and implicit assumptions of magazine producers about medium-specific content. It first considers the complexities of media convergence before discussing the tension between medium-specific cultures and the rhetoric of cross-platform branding in women's magazines, leading to theoretical and conceptual questions about medium identity. It then describes how producers' working patterns and assumptions vary across different media (web, magazine, and iPad) in three significant ways: the importance of the editorial voice, quality standards for editorial content, and expectations about the extent of advertiser influence on content. It also highlights the distinctions between print and online; tablet devices, for example, are being positioned as a tool that can elide medium-specific challenges while also serving as a test bed for advertising/editorial relations within digital environments. The chapter suggests that magazine content does not appear to easily flow off the printed page, but goes through many crosscurrents.

Pollution is detrimental by definition, but cheap waste disposal provides economic benefits to society. A balance is needed between protection of the environment and the level of acceptable change. Laws and regulations set out those levels and then science must monitor the environment to ensure that levels of change remain in the acceptable boundaries. Designing and implementing monitoring programmes is difficult in the marine environment as data collection is expensive and the systems are naturally highly variable, making data ‘noisy’. One of the most widely accepted axioms in international environmental protection is the polluter-pays principle. This extends to the cost of clean-up from accidental releases but also the cost of regular treatment and monitoring of the effects of routine, operational, discharges. However, as there will always remain an economic incentive to cut costs by cutting treatment, pollution regulation measures require the back-up of effective enforcement.