Monthly Roundup: Key Testing Standards from September 2025

Looking back at September 2025, the Testing sector—classified under Environmental and Analytical Testing—witnessed the publication of four influential standards. These documents addressed issues ranging from non-destructive testing methodologies for infrastructure and shipboard equipment to advances in environmental testing protocols and particle size analysis technologies. For professionals in compliance management, engineering, procurement, and testing, this concise yet comprehensive review offers valuable insights into technical progress and evolving industry priorities. The September 2025 roundup helps you grasp the main regulatory shifts and technical innovations, ensuring you stay well-informed and positioned to meet new benchmarks in quality and operational excellence.

Monthly Overview: September 2025

September 2025 saw a significant uptick in standards development for the Testing sector, with notable publications clustered in non-destructive testing (NDT), environmental simulation, maritime equipment classifications, and laboratory analysis techniques. This aligns with industry priorities to ensure higher product reliability, safety under demanding conditions, and compliance with both legacy and emerging regulations. Compared to typical patterns, the month was marked by a particularly multidisciplinary range, touching industrial, maritime, electrical, and laboratory settings. This diversity signals the sector's growth beyond traditional boundaries—emphasizing holistic performance, environmental resilience, and improved detection and analysis precision.

Frequent technical revisions, like the update for maritime environment classifications (EN IEC 60721-3-6:2025), reflect a drive to harmonize standards with recent technological advances and updated environmental data. Meanwhile, the focus on methods such as radioactive tracer leak detection (ISO 6366:2025) and agile test programme development (EN IEC 60068-3-14:2025) points to demand for rapid yet robust quality assurance approaches. Analytical techniques (ISO 22412:2025) continue evolving, especially as new materials and manufacturing requirements raise the bar for test accuracy and reproducibility.

Overall, September’s publications indicate an industry pushing toward higher standards of safety, resilience, and product efficacy, especially where environmental or operational stresses are significant factors.

Standards Published This Month

ISO 6366:2025 – Non-destructive Testing – Leak Testing – Radioactive Tracer Methods for Pressured Vessels and Underground Pipelines

Non-destructive testing – Leak testing – Radioactive tracer methods for pressured vessels and underground pipelines

ISO 6366:2025 represents a significant step forward in non-destructive leak detection, providing detailed methodologies for identifying leaks in pressured vessels and underground pipelines using radioactive tracers. The standard outlines both external and internal detection techniques, including the pulse-velocity, response curve, and displacement methods. These are complemented by guidance on selecting appropriate radioactive tracers, calculating leak rates, determining required tracer activity levels for heat exchangers, and ensuring protection against ionizing radiation—ensuring safety and compliance with regulatory frameworks like IAEA General Safety Requirements.

Applicable across industries reliant on pressured containers and subsurface pipelines (e.g., oil, gas, petrochemicals, and civil infrastructure), this standard standardizes best practices for both online (operational) and offline (maintenance) leak testing. Organizations adopting ISO 6366:2025 will benefit from minimized downtime, enhanced safety, and reduced environmental impact.

Key highlights:

• Details procedures for pulse-velocity, response curve, and displacement techniques
• Specifies requirements for radiation protection and legal compliance
• Includes comprehensive annexes with case studies and calculation methods

Access the full standard:View ISO 6366:2025 on iTeh Standards

EN IEC 60068-3-14:2025 – Environmental Testing – Developing a Climatic Sequential Test

Environmental testing – Part 3-14: Supporting documentation and guidance – Developing a climatic sequential test

EN IEC 60068-3-14:2025 is a comprehensive reference for creating climatic sequential test programmes, an essential facet of environmental testing for electrical, electromechanical, and electronic equipment. The standard introduces a systematic, three-stage process: reviewing requirements and compiling a provisional test sequence; refining critical environments and sequencing based on product usage and failure mode analysis; and preparing robust, cost-effective test programmes. This approach recognizes cumulative and synergistic effects of environmental exposures such as temperature variations, humidity, shock, and vibration—factors known to influence product degradation and real-world performance.

This guidance is especially relevant for manufacturers, designers, and end users seeking repeatable, reliable assessments of product durability and function across the entire lifecycle, from storage and transportation to operational use. The document also covers customizing test sequences to match specific product or application needs and includes best practices for specification writers and test practitioners.

Key highlights:

• Describes a generic, staged approach for developing climatic sequential tests
• Addresses cumulative and synergistic environmental effects on products
• Offers advice on tailoring test programmes for product-specific risk factors

Access the full standard:View EN IEC 60068-3-14:2025 on iTeh Standards

EN IEC 60721-3-6:2025 – Classification of Groups of Environmental Parameters and Their Severities – Ship Environments

Classification of environmental conditions – Part 3-6: Classification of groups of environmental parameters and their severities – Ship environments

This second edition of EN IEC 60721-3-6:2025 updates the classification of environmental conditions faced by products—particularly electrotechnical equipment—installed on ships. The standard provides an exhaustive typology of climatic, biological, chemical, and mechanical environmental stressors encountered across vessels operating in inland waters, coastal areas, and oceans, including regions with ice navigation. Substantial revisions from earlier editions include the introduction of new environmental classes, updates to condition tables, and restructured annex content for improved clarity.

The standard is critical for equipment designers, marine engineers, and quality managers aiming to ensure operational integrity and longevity of shipborne systems. It supports more accurate environmental simulations and better-informed decisions regarding equipment ratings, specification drafting, and compliance with maritime safety requirements.

Key highlights:

• Replaces most previous environmental classes with new data-driven classifications
• Refines definitions for climatic, mechanical, and chemical stresses specific to maritime environments
• Provides tools for specifying required operational or survival capabilities in hostile shipboard contexts

Access the full standard:View EN IEC 60721-3-6:2025 on iTeh Standards

ISO 22412:2025 – Particle Size Analysis – Dynamic Light Scattering (DLS)

Particle size analysis – Dynamic light scattering (DLS)

ISO 22412:2025 is a cornerstone for laboratories and manufacturers engaged in particle characterization at the nanometre and sub-micrometre scale. It codifies best practices for using dynamic light scattering (DLS) techniques to measure hydrodynamic sizes and size distributions of particles, emulsions, and fine bubbles in liquids—accommodating both dilute and concentrated suspensions. This edition incorporates significant new features, such as multi-angle DLS (MADLS), imaging-based measurement approaches, expanded guidance for online measurements, and refined quality assurance protocols.

The standard is essential for quality control and R&D in fields ranging from pharmaceuticals, chemicals, and nanotechnology to food and beverage processing, providing harmonized procedures for preparing samples, operating DLS equipment, interpreting data, and managing uncertainty. With expanded annexes on sample preparation, method validation, data analysis, and troubleshooting, it supports accurate, defensible particle size measurements that underpin critical product attributes.

Key highlights:

• Specifies protocols for hydrodynamic particle sizing by DLS, including MADLS and imaging DLS
• Provides comprehensive guidance on sample prep, measurement, system qualification, and quality control
• Offers extended background on theory, best practices, and the handling of measurement artefacts

Access the full standard:View ISO 22412:2025 on iTeh Standards

Common Themes and Industry Trends

A clear trend in September 2025’s Testing standards was the emphasis on environmental realism and reliability in performance assessment. Across industrial, marine, laboratory, and electronic product domains, standards focused on:

• Building greater confidence in equipment function through refined environmental simulations and test programming (EN IEC 60068-3-14:2025)
• Addressing the unique and evolving challenges of harsh operational settings, particularly onboard ships (EN IEC 60721-3-6:2025)
• Advancing non-destructive testing methodologies for critical safety infrastructure (ISO 6366:2025)
• Incorporating advanced analytical technology and quality control for laboratory testing (ISO 22412:2025)

Other themes included a push for harmonized terminology, modular test design, better documentation, and heightened attention to worker safety and risk management (e.g., radiation exposure and contamination precautions).

The dissemination of revised and expanded classifications—particularly for ship environments and laboratory protocols—reflects the industry’s recognition that legacy standards must keep pace with new operational realities, advanced materials, and regulatory scrutiny.

Compliance and Implementation Considerations

Organizations impacted by these standards should prioritize:

• Gap analysis: Review existing practices against the latest requirements, especially for environmental classifications or DLS methods, to identify necessary updates.
• Training: Educate staff on new or revised protocols, with particular attention to safety in radioactive tracer applications and advanced analytical techniques.
• System calibration and validation: Ensure that equipment, procedures, and reference materials are updated and qualified per the new methodologies (notably in particle sizing and environmental simulation).
• Supplier and specification management: Update procurement specifications to require compliance with these new standards, especially for maritime, electrical, or analytical products.
• Documentation: Leverage new supporting documentation and guidance to streamline compliance and internal audit processes.

Implementation timeline: While adoption deadlines may vary by region, organizations should verify national endorsement dates (often 12–24 months from publication) and monitor for transition periods if previous standards are being withdrawn.

Resources: Accessing the full standards via iTeh Standards provides the depth needed for complete implementation. Manufacturers, test labs, and operators are encouraged to collaborate with industry associations and standards organizations for best-practice exchange and training support.

Conclusion: Key Takeaways from September 2025

The standards published in September 2025 reinforce the testing sector’s ongoing evolution toward greater precision, realism, and operational safety. Four standards—spanning non-destructive testing, climatic simulation, maritime environment classification, and advanced particle analysis—equip professionals with actionable frameworks for compliance, quality assurance, and product durability. Notable changes include updated methods for leak detection and shipboard environmental classification, alongside expanded analytical and procedural guidance for laboratory applications.

Industry professionals should view this monthly roundup as both a reference and a prompt for action: conduct internal reviews, align documentation and training, and engage with key resources to keep practices up to date. Staying current with these standards is not merely a regulatory necessity; it’s a strategic imperative to ensure safety, enhance product reputation, and secure competitive advantage.

Explore these standards in detail and access further resources at iTeh Standards.