The National Sanitation Foundation (now called NSF International) was a grand idea of three profs at the University of Michigan.  Drs. Walter Snyder, Henry Vaughan, and Nathan Sinai established the concept at the School of Public Health. The goal was to create national standards for food safety and sanitation- as opposed to the piecemeal state approach that then obtained.  By 1967, it became a non-profit entity.  (I’ll discuss this more below.)

One of its first forays was to cover soda fountain/luncheonette equipment- you know, the ones that lined the counters that folks like me boycotted because of the purveyors’ racial animus.

My first encounter with NSF was when I lived in Ann Arbor (the home of the University of Michigan) and found that there was this private foundation that wanted to regulate the water recycling system we just developed. (At the time, their water division covered water treatment chemical, drinking water filter, pool paraphernalia, and some plumbing components.  We were recycling toilet water (removing what users added to the toilet)-  never would there be any drinking from the unit.  [OK. If the homeowner failed to drop the toilet lid, dogs would likely find the water enticing.])

To be honest, I really didn’t ‘run into’ NSF.  (At the time, the only NSF I knew about was the National Science Foundation- the granter of scholarships to many a techie.) I ran into Dr. Nina McClelland with her hand-carried dachshund, who was at the time President and Chief Executive Officer of NSF.  She would become the Chairperson of NSF International during her 30 year tenure.  (That first encounter educated me that her name was pronounced ‘Niner’.)  Nina had earned her PhD in environmental chemistry from the University (1968), right before joining NSF.

(The U of M was just up 45 miles along US 23 from the granter of her undergraduate (BS Biology, 1951) and two Master’s degrees (1963), the University of Toledo. She was the first woman to head up (Chief Chemist) a wastewater treatment plant [Toledo, Ohio]. Nina stuck around Ann Arbor- in particular to the NSF- until this century, when she was well into her 70s.  When she returned to Toledo, eventually become dean of the College of Arts and Science.  It now sports the Dr. Nina McClelland Laboratory for Water Chemistry and Environmental Analysis.)

Dr. Nina (she always used her first name) led the NSF quest to control those manufacturers who provided water equipment.  (Our Porta-Potti, the toilet of choice for RV use, sported an NSF approval logo.)

We eventually convinced Nina that the Cycle-Let was not subject to their regulations.  Except NSF did, soon thereafter, manage to regulate on-site wastewater systems.

How they did it was very educational.  They began running seminars covering on-site waste treatment systems- from aerobic units, to septic systems, to mounds, and beyond.  But the key to their success was to invite state regulators, folks who regulated the systems on federal lands, and the like to present those papers.  To review the efforts of others.  To serve on the committees behind those mini-conventions.

Et, voila.  These same folks acquiesced to (no, they enthusiastically joined in)  the standards that NSF proposed.

Which meant our efforts with the manufacturers of those systems would now always include NSF.  Because their imprimatur (better read as their per-capita fee for each system sold) was often the critical factor in obtaining the desired sale to the end user or real estate developer.  (By the way, ‘On-Site Wastewater Treatment’ was the 3^rd book I ever wrote.  The other two (before 1978) were “Applied Biology Laboratory” and “Environmental Conditions in Real Estate Development”.)

One of my complaints about NSF is that it was non-profit.  No, I have nothing against non-profits.  (I serve on the board of many such entities.)  But this non-profit didn’t distribute its copious profits to do good. Nope.  Its profits (ok, its ‘surplus‘) were used to line the pockets of the executives of the entity.  Think Steve Bannon.  Except NSF never told anyone that their execs were not going to profit from the venture, so that really is an unfair comparison.

Despite my reservations about these sorts of non-profits, NSF has done a great deal of good. It eliminated many a quack selling water treatment improvements to an unsuspecting public.  (I’m old enough to remember those folks selling “magnetic devices” to clean up water.)

And, as Dr. Joe Cotruvo (former director, Water Standards, US Environmental Protection Agency) stated, Nina “…was a key driver that changed NSF International from a small food-handling equipment and water quality independent and testing organization into one of the world’s major players in a whole range of environmental and health protection areas”.  Not to mention serving as an inspiration for many women to enter STEM.

Nina McClelland succumbed to heart disease on the 16^th of August in Toledo, Ohio at the age of 90.