US
Consumer Product Safety Commission www.cpsc.gov
Reprinted From
Consumer
Product Safety Improvement Act - Substances : Lead and Phthalates
Section 108: Products Containing Certtain Phthalates
Three
phthalates, DEHP, DBP, and BBP, have been permanently
prohibited by Congress in concentration of more than 0.1% in children's
toys
or child care articles. A children's toy means a product intended
for a
child 12 years of age or younger for use when playing, and a child
care
article means a product that a child 3 and younger would use for
sleeping,
feeding, sucking or teething.
Three additional phthalates, DINP, DIDP, and DnOP, have been
prohibited pending
further study and review by a group of outside experts and the
Commission. This
interim prohibition applies to child care articles or toys that can be
placed
in a child's mouth or brought to the mouth and kept in the
mouth so that it can
be sucked or chewed that contains a concentration of more than 0.1% of the
phthalates.
Section
101: Chilrdren's Products containing Lead; Lead Paint Rule
Until
February
10, 2009, toys must meet CPSC's lead paint rule specifies that the
maximum
allowable total lead content is 0.06% based on the total weight
of the
non-volatile portion of the paint (which is equivalent to 600 ppm). As
of
August 14, 2009, the maximum allowable total lead content of such items
will
fall to 0.009% (which is equivalent to 90 ppm). http://www.cpsc.gov/businfo/leadsop.pdf.
The Standard Consumer Safety Specification for Toy Safety,
ASTM F963-07 becomes
a mandatory consumer product safety standard on February 10, 2009. This
standard additionally places limits on the amount of lead (and
other
heavy metals, namely antimony, arsenic, barium, cadmium, chromium,
mercury and
selenium) based on the soluble portion of that material using a
specified extraction methodology given in the standard. Toys
manufactured after
February 10, 2009, will have to meet these requirements.
Consumer groups
and Testing facilities:
World
Against Toys Causing Harm, Inc. (W.A.T.C.H.) Publishes an Annual
Top Ten Worst Toys List
http://www.healthytoys.org/about.safety.php
http://www.uspirg.org/issues/toy-safety
http://www.contractlaboratory.com/labclass/toys.cfm
http://www.nsf.org/business/toy_testing/index.asp?program=ToyTes
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