To meet this goal, governments and various technical bodies have developed electrical safety standards.
Proper safety precautions must be taken when doing this test, such as exclusion zones, making sure no wires are exposed, and personal protective equipment is worn.
Acceptable values of insulation resistance vary depending on circuit purpose, industry, and country.
By tracking the insulation resistance of a circuit over time, preventative maintenance may be able to be planned before equipment failure.
Leakage may happen when a person touches live parts, which can cause electricity to passes through their body instead of the normal circuit return path.
"With hazardous voltages present in a system a robust and reliable approach to isolation is needed such that multiple and un-related insulation system failures would need to occur before an operator or patient is put at risk.
"[7] In addition to the insulation of the device being powered the additional main points the organizations have set forward with the implementation of the MOPP standards are:[8] Example Clearance Example showing the differences between the isolation and creepage requirements for MOOP and MOPP.