Toy industry moves toward safety certification program

Recently I attended a meeting jointly held by the American National Standards Institute (ANSI), a voluntary standards certification organization, and the Toy Industry Association (TIA), a trade group that represents toy makers. As a result of the record number of unsafe toys recalled last year, the organizations have formed the Toy Safety Coordination Initiative, a developing program that is designed to improve the safety conformance of toys sold in American and to rebuild consumer confidence in the safety of toys in the American marketplace. The program was developed with input from manufacturers, retailers, testing labs, government agencies and consumers.

The program has three components:

1. A requirement for a risk assessment or design hazard analysis to be conducted on all new toy designs;
2. A factory audit and accreditation program that should help ensure that toys be made following Good Manufacturing Practice;
3. Compliance tests of toy samples from the production line to help ensure that toys meet industry and government safety standards.

The end result will be a safety certification mark for toys that pass all three requirements, much like the UL, ETL or CSA listed marks found on virtually all plug-in electrical products.

Although this toy safety initiative is a major step forward in helping prevent unsafe toys from finding their way to the market, at CU we think the proposed program does not go far enough. We are particularly concerned that the program does not require frequent enough sampling of production lots to ensure that toys have been manufactured to high levels of safety. Moreover, it does not require marketplace surveillance to uncover any holes in the safety net. But the toy industry members argue that they are depending on rigorous improvements in factory control processes to result in toys that comply with safety standards.

The safety certification mark, which may appear on packaging and the toys themselves, has not yet been designed. Consumer recognition of a new safety mark will require plenty of marketing and consumer education campaigns. We think the toy industry should seize this unique opportunity to create a mark that not only signals compliance with safety standards but also can be used to communicate the safe age range of a toy.

Similar marks already exist in Europe. Toys sold in the EU are required to carry a CE mark (see image)
that indicates the manufacturer's self-declaration that the toy meets standards. European toys that have small parts that could pose choking hazards are also labeled with another mark that communicates those hazards. Using an international symbol that shows unsafe use for children in certain age ranges such as 0-3, 0-8 and so forth, can help prevent parents and caregivers from putting children in harms way by giving them age-inappropriate toys.

(The ANSI/TIA team specifically rejected including self-declarations by manufacturers as part of its program. Instead, independent testing and certification would be used.)

We are hoping to see further improvements to the proposed ANSI/TIA Toy Safety Cooperation Initiative. We would also like to see the groups move quickly to put a good process in place that will allow all consumers to breathe more easily when the next holiday season arrives. —Don Mays