Weights & Measures440 Third Street • Room 305 • Columbus, IN 47201 About UsOn any given day, every American makes dozens of purchase decisions - at the grocery store and the gas pump, to pay a taxi fare or feed a parking meter, for a yard of fabric or a gallon of home heating oil. Almost everything we buy is sold by weight, volume, length, count or measure. Think of other examples - a dozen eggs, a gallon of milk, a liter of wine, a pound of hamburger, and a cord of firewood. Without standard measurements, it would be difficult to do even simple things like use cookbooks or buy carpeting, laundry detergent, and fabric. As diverse as the character of these "daily necessities" may be, they all have one ingredient in common: the trust that is built into every transaction by a weights and measures program. Weights and Measures regulatory professionals set standards and uniform procedures to verify weights, volume, length, or count ensuring that consumers get the quantity that they pay for that businesses sell the quantity that they advertise. Because of the unlimited range of products and services that are influenced by weights and measures activities, these standards create a comprehensive, impartial and often invisible shield that protects equity in our marketplace. Keeping the market in balance… You don't carry a scale or measuring tape with you to check the weight or measure of everything you buy. How do you know you're getting what you pay for? For hundreds of years, your local weights and measures officials have been working behind the scenes to protect consumers, businesses, and manufacturers from unfair practices. These men and women use highly accurate equipment to inspect scales, meters, scanning equipment and packaged products at supermarkets. They also inspect weighing and measuring equipment and packages at warehouses, packing plants, feed mills, shipping companies, lumber yards, gasoline stations, and so on. They act as a third party to help maintain fairness and keep the marketplace in balance. Each state has a metrology laboratory that has a set of standard weights and measures. These are used to check the accuracy of the equipment used by weights and measures officials and industry. |
