Chinese Experts Stress Chemical Safety of Toys

On May 27, 2022, the Toxics-Free Corps organized a meeting on chemical safety of plastic toys with officials in quality control departments, leaders of institutions, and representatives from companies etc.

China is the world's largest toy manufacturer and exporter. As presented by Dr. Xia Liu from China National Institute of Standardization (CNIS), China has established a mature toy safety standard system, because

• more than 100 toy standards have been formulated, released and implemented, including more than 50 national standards,

• Chinese toy safety standards are basically equivalent to ISO standards, EU standards, or other international standards,

• voluntary certification made by third-party organizations is recognized by customers, which has raised requirements on toy safety.

However, toys are still the most frequently notified Chinese products by the EU Rapid Alert System for non-food consumer products (RAPEX) and US Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC), of which about 27% notifications are related to excessive hazardous chemicals. Main hazards that toys may present are from:

• Migrated harmful elements: antimony, arsenic, lead, barium, mercury, cadmium, chromium, selenium;

• Phthalates;

• Total lead;

• Azo dyes.

Take phthalates for example. They are widely used as cheap plasticizers, which can interfere with endocrine. The GB 6675.1-2014 Toys Safety―Part 1: Basic Code stipulated limits on plasticizers in toys as below:

Table 1: Limits of Restricted Plasticizers in Toys

2022 is the fourth year that Toxics-Free Corps has conducted investigations on phthalates content in the yellow rubber ducky. According to Toxics-Free Corps’ yearly report in this regard, 120 samples of yellow rubber ducky were bought via E-commerce platforms in 2022 and the test results showed a 92% compliance rate, which is significantly higher than the past three years. However, when verifying their CCC marks, the compliance rate is only 54% for the TOP3 platforms. Ms. Qijv Ma, Head of Children's Products and Resource Recycling Certification Department, China Quality Certification Center (CQC) was glad to hear the compliance rate of plastic toys in the market in terms of phthalates content is rising year by year and she emphasized that “the goal is to reach 100% compliance rate and CCC Certification is the bottom line of quality and safety control of toys.” Children's products subject to CCC Certification include:

• Stroller

• Toys

1. Electric toys

2. Plastic toys

3. Metal toys

4. Riding toys

• Car seat

In the panel discussion, Mr. Qi Zhuang from Platform Governance Department of Alibaba introduced their practices on management of children's products. Toys without effective CCC Certification are not allowed on Taobao. His colleague Mr. Yiming Zeng added that customers can report nonconforming products through the online system, IT technicians of Alibaba have developed programs to position risk products for verification and Alibaba maintains smooth communication channels with the government quality control departments to update quality control measures in a timely manner.

“Under supervision by media and the control of E-commerce platforms, the toy safety has been effectively improved, and consumers' awareness on chemical safety has also been raised”, said Qingxing Yang, Vice President of Shenzhen Institute of Consumption Quality, and he added that “our Institute has taken actions to summarize common problems and formulate group standards jointly with related associations and leading enterprises to encourage more companies to produce toys in accordance with higher standards.” In addition, Ms. Yanfang Liu, Secretary General of Shenzhen Toys Industry Association suggests companies to select qualified suppliers and train them, test products for quality regularly and establish quality safety traceability system to locate and handle problems timely.

In the conclusion session of the meeting, Dr. Da Mao of Toxics-Free Corps pointed out that we should not only pay attention to customers’ health, but also take environmental protection into consideration during the process of production and disposal, because eventually polluted environment will harm people’s health. To address this problem, Chinese State Council recently released the Action Plan for New Pollutants Treatment which highlighted that the use of endocrine disruptors in toys, school supplies and other related products should be strictly controlled in accordance with national standards.

Experts call for manufactures, customers, media and E-commerce platforms to jointly work on the chemical safety of children's products, such as establish quality control systems in factories, educate customers on qualified products and develop a long-term supervision mechanism. At the same time, officials in quality control departments are working to perfect the safety standard system for toys which will be dynamically updated in the future.