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Hurricanes, an annual menace to those living in the southeast United States, can cause billions of dollars of damage. Building codes in areas prone to hurricanes sometimes mandate the use of hurricane resistant materials to protect buildings and people. Ill equipped buildings can be torn apart by hurricane winds, and subsequently become debris, which cause damage to nearby buildings. UL has methods and standards to test structures to withstand even the strongest hurricanes.

One of their more notable hurricane withstand tests is the missile impact test. In this test, an 8 foot long wooden plank is fired out of an air cannon at speeds of 100 miles per hour. This impact is meant to stimulate debris caught in a very powerful hurricane. This plank has enough momentum to smash right through a cinderblock! Windows that pass this test and others can be used in areas where hurricanes tend to strike, without having to worry about them breaking due to hurricane related destruction.

Hurricane withstand testing is just one of the many different safety standards UL tests for. Many different structures throughout the world are required to have additional safety features depending onwhat natural disasters tend to occur in their area. Since earthquakes tend to strike  the West Coast of the United States more often, buildings there have been designed with eathquake safety in mind. Regardless of which standards are applicable to your product, let Product Safety Consulting be "Your Outsourced Compliance Department".