AUGUSTA, Maine — A cover illustration from an old Saturday Evening Post shows a shopkeeper and a woman standing on each side of a butcher-shop scale that holds a chicken. His finger pushes down on one end to add weight, while she pokes a finger up on the other side.
“It’s still true today,” said Dan Newcombe, whose job is to make sure the weights and measures in Maine are true.
At least $24 billion in annual sales in Maine alone are weighed or measured in some way. Weighing devices that are even slightly off can have an impact of millions of dollars, either for or against the consumer.
The stakes are greater in larger states, and nationally they could add up to a staggering $7 trillion.
This year, more than a dozen states uncovered a pattern of fish packers adding the weight of glaze ice to the labeled weight of fish, meaning consumers paid several dollars more per pound of fish.
Correct weights affect the formulations of medicines, baby formulas, the chemicals in toothpaste, foods and liquids people eat and drink.
Americans depend on accurate measurements when they fill their gas- or heating-oil tanks, buy meat at the butcher counter, pay taxi fares or purchase a gallon of milk.
The National Institute of Standards and Technology, a non-regulatory federal agency and lead standards-setting organization for the country, said its work to advance an accurate measuring system underpins about half the U.S. economy, or about $7 trillion of the U.S. gross domestic product.
Some past problems
•A surprise inspection in 2008 at Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport found that 28 of Southwest Airlines’ 72 baggage scales were slightly out of calibration, while three others had more serious problems and were shut down.
•Office Depot agreed in 2007 to pay $2.3 million to settle a lawsuit claiming California customers were overcharged by faulty scanners.
•In 2007, the Texas Agriculture Department published a list of 100 gas stations with inaccurate fuel pumps. The same year, inspections in Minnesota turned up a gas station where customers were getting about 4 1/2 gallons of gas for every 5 gallons they bought.
