122 records

What is the IEC or ATEX equivalent of this North American hazardous-area rating?

122 records covering 96 north american designations, one fact each. Every value is transcribed from the source that states it and carries the sentence it was taken from: 6 sources across 5 sites, last checked 2026-08-06, due for re-check by 2028-08-05. Every record is listed below, each linking the page its value came from.

5 records where two or more sources state different values. Both sides are reproduced on the record page, each with its own source and quote.

About this data

Crosswalk between the two concurrent hazardous-area classification systems: the North American Class / Division system of NEC Articles 500 and 505 (NFPA 70) and the CSA code, against the Zone system of IEC 60079, ATEX and IECEx. Each record is one designation in one system with its stated counterpart in the other, covering area classification (Division 1 and 2 against Zone 0, 1, 2, 20, 21, 22), gas groups (A, B, C, D against IIA, IIB, IIC, IIB+H2), dust groups (E, F, G against IIIA, IIIB, IIIC), protection concepts (explosion-proof against Ex d, intrinsically safe against Ex i, purged/pressurized against Ex p, dust-ignition-proof against Ex t, non-incendive against Ex nA/Ex ec) with the IEC standard number for each, and temperature codes T1 to T6 with their maximum surface temperatures. It also carries the equipment marking codes themselves -- the NEC 500 bracket codes (XP), (IS), (NI), (DIP), (PX), (PY), (PZ) and the NFPA 496 purge Types X, Y and Z, against the NEC 505 and CEC Ex / AEx codes -- each with the country whose column printed it, the hazard class and division or zone it is approved for, and the ISA, UL, FM, NFPA or CSA standard behind it, because the same code means different standards either side of the border: (IS) is UL 913 / FM 3610 in the US and C22.2 No. 157 in Canada. Answers 'is ATEX Ex d IIB T4 the same as Class I Div 1 Group C', 'what does T2D mean and is there an IEC equivalent', 'Division 1 or Zone 1 which is stricter', 'NEC Group B IEC equivalent', and 'can I install Zone 1 equipment in a Division 1 area'. Three things the mapping gets wrong when stated as a simple table: NEC 500 has no Zone 0 equivalent so Division 1 spans Zone 0 and Zone 1 and is under-specified for Zone 0; the North American temperature codes T2A, T2B, T2C, T2D, T3A, T3B, T3C and T4A have no IEC counterpart at all; and publishers disagree on NEC Group B, giving it as IIC or as IIB+H2, which changes the required flameproof gap. Every counterpart is quoted from the page that stated it and attributed, so the disagreement is visible.

The data

Where this came from

Every record above links the page it was taken from and quotes the sentence that states it. These are the 6 sources this dataset was assembled from.

• exknowledge.comhttps://exknowledge.com/pages/nec-500-vs-atex-iec.html
• euroswitch.comhttps://www.euroswitch.com/wp-content/uploads/euroswitch-hazardous-area-guide_V6.pdf
• inframena.comhttps://www.inframena.com/hazardous-area-classification-equivalency-guide/
• e2s.comhttps://www.e2s.com/guide-for-hazardous-areas/gas-and-dust-groups
• exknowledge.comhttps://exknowledge.com/pages/gas-groups.html
• ldpi-inc.comhttps://ldpi-inc.com/resources/classification-codes/class-1-locations/

Machine-readable

• data.jsonThe whole dataset — every record with its source URL and source quote.
• Open Knowledge Format bundleOne JSON object per line — every record's frontmatter and quoted span exactly as it is held here, in one fetch.
• data.csvThe same records as one flat table, for a spreadsheet or a dataframe. The last four columns are the source URL, the quoted sentence it was read from, the date we last checked it, and which columns are our reading rather than the page's words.
• How this is made and checkedWhat "verified against source" does and does not mean.

From your own code

Same records, same quotes, without scraping the page: refsource is on PyPI and npm. Each value comes back carrying the URL it was read from and the sentence on that page that states it — .source and .quote sit on the value itself rather than in a side channel, so the checking step is available instead of skipped.

pip install refsource
refsource lookup ex-classification-system-crosswalk category="system attribute"

npx -y refsource lookup ex-classification-system-crosswalk category="system attribute"

Set your AI assistant up to use this

Two files and no account. Put this in .mcp.json at the root of your project — Claude Code, Cursor, Windsurf, VS Code and Codex all read that file — and your assistant can look this dataset up instead of recalling it. The server is remote, keyless and read-only.

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "referencesource": {
      "type": "http",
      "url": "https://referencesource.org/mcp"
    }
  }
}

Add to Cursor · or, on the command line: claude mcp add --transport http referencesource https://referencesource.org/mcp --scope project

Then one line in the project's CLAUDE.md or AGENTS.md, so the assistant knows when to reach for it:

When a question needs "North American vs IEC/ATEX explosion protection designations", call the referencesource MCP server at https://referencesource.org/mcp (tool `search_records`, dataset_slug `ex-classification-system-crosswalk`) instead of answering from memory — every record it returns carries its source URL and a verbatim quote from that page.

What each tool does, and the servers built over single registers: Connect your AI assistant.

122 records. last verified against source 2026-08-06. due for re-check by 2028-08-05.

Licence. Facts extracted from freely published manufacturer and industry reference pages. Designation crosswalks are safety facts, not copyrightable expression. NFPA 70 and the IEC 60079 series are not reproduced and were not opened -- the fact is taken, never the document. Four separate publishers, no bulk take from any one.