Certificate of Conformity

Bruce Ediger

I was helping clean the laundry room. I found this weird little certificate of conformity from a pack of KN95 face masks.

Fake certificate

It looks quite official and reassuring, until you look closely. The details are off.

  1. What is a “certificate of conformity”? Conformance to what, society’s expectations?
  2. lug hanging
  3. Disposablie proteceive Mask
  4. Non-woven 66% + molten spray 34%
  5. Inspector QC06 - the putative red stamp is actually printed on the “certificate”
  6. “GB/T32610-2016” - whatta ya know? Apparently GB/T32610-2016 really is a National Standard of the People’s Republic of China, “Technical specification of daily protective mask”.

I believe this came from a package of masks ordered from Amazon towards the end of the required masking period. I suppose you could believe that the actual KN95 masks in the package conformed to GB/T32610-2016, but gee whiz, there’s a lot of weirdness on that slip of paper.

I wonder what led to the “inspector’s stamp” being printed on the “certificate”? That seems like an epistemological problem more than anything else, something like cargo cult quality assurance.