Safety Update: ASTM to Vote on Four Modifications to Toy Safety Standard
November 13, 2018 | Toy Association staff attended a recent ASTM Subcommittee on Toy Safety F15.22 meeting in West Conshohocken, PA to discuss items to potentially be included in a 2018 edition of ASTM F963: Standard Consumer Safety Specification for Toy Safety. The Toy Association’s Joan Lawrence, senior vice president of standards and regulatory affairs (and chair of the ASTM Subcommittee), and Alan Kaufman, senior vice president of technical affairs, were both present at the meeting.
The Subcommittee is suggesting four areas where the standard needs updating, including:
- A correction to the acoustics standard for push and pull toys to address a concern raised by the Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) from the 2017 edition – and for which CPSC has issued enforcement discretion through December 31, 2018;
- Broadening the requirement for expanding materials slightly to address certain products not foreseen at the time the standard was originally written, but that appear to pose similar concerns;
- Correcting an error in the tolerances for the expanding materials gauge (Figure 30 of the standard); and
- Updating the standard to mirror the CPSC final rule on phthalates.
A ballot for these (and items for other product standards) has been issued by ASTM for a 30-day period, with voting ending on December 12; members of the subcommittee and the main F15 committee on Consumer Products are urged to vote as soon as possible. The hope is that these might be approved within ASTM by year-end in order to make the timeframe for the expiration of the CPSC enforcement discretion and inclusion in an “-18” edition of the standard. Additional topics discussed during the meeting were proposed as possible future work items for the Subcommittee in 2019.
Members will be kept apprised once updates to the toy safety standard are finalized. Questions on these items may be directed to The Toy Association’s Joan Lawrence or Alan Kaufman.