Excerpts of Foreign Product Safety Standards Related to the Printing Industry

[ppzhan Abstract] As people's health awareness continues to develop, the printing industry has been "forced" to move in a green and environmentally friendly direction. This has become the development direction of the printing industry. Now, Western developed countries are also putting forward various environmental requirements from different areas. The following excerpts are provided for the reference of printing enterprises.

As is well known, if heavy metal elements and phthalates accumulate in various organs of the human body over the long term, they will certainly harm human health, and will in particular have a great impact on the healthy growth of children. Therefore, for consumers, the first consideration when purchasing products is product safety, namely whether the product contains harmful substances. Especially for products intended for children, the safety requirements for the products are even stricter. Undoubtedly, whether or not the products are exported, printing enterprises need to manage product safety well and ensure that products do not contain harmful substances or that the content of such substances is far below the accepted limit standards. At present, the main foreign product safety standards related to the printing industry are as follows.

US Toy Safety Standard

The "US Toy Safety Standard" (ASTMF963-11) was developed by the American Society for Testing and Materials. The new version of the "US Toy Safety Standard" was approved in December 2008 and officially published in February 2009. This standard is a mandatory standard for toy products for children under 14 years of age. All products falling within this scope need to pass tests in three areas.

First, mechanical and physical performance testing, which examine the safety of toys in terms of mechanical and physical performance. This mainly involves testing small parts, sharp points, sharp edges, protrusions and magnets, so as to prevent them from causing harm to children. It mainly includes: toys for children under 36 months must not produce small parts before or after abuse testing; toys for children under 8 years must not contain accessible sharp points before or after abuse testing; toys for children under 8 years must not contain accessible sharp edges or protrusions that could stab children; requirements are set for dangerous magnet parts used in toys with a magnetic flux index greater than 50, so as to prevent children under 14 from swallowing small magnet parts.

Second, flammability testing, which is used to test the flame-retardant performance of products. Materials other than textiles (excluding paper) used in toys should be non-flammable materials. Packaging materials that consumers may discard, and packaging items that may become part of a toy's play function, also need to meet this requirement.

Third, toxicity testing for 8 heavy metal elements. The migration of soluble antimony, arsenic, barium, cadmium, chromium, lead, mercury and selenium from surface coating materials and substrates must not exceed the maximum limits specified in the regulations. This is consistent with the requirements of China's "National Technical Specifications for Toy Safety". The total lead content in surface coating materials and substrates needs to be controlled to less than or equal to 100ppm in substrates and less than or equal to 90ppm in surface coatings.

The Consumer Product Safety Improvement Act of the United States

The Consumer Product Safety Improvement Act of 2008 issued by the United States in August 2008 has become the most stringent consumer protection law since the establishment of the US Consumer Product Safety Commission in 1972. On August 12, 2011, the US President formally signed HR2715, an amendment to the Consumer Product Safety Improvement Act, amending the existing toy act CPSIA. CPSIA affects all related industries in the United States that produce, import and distribute toys, apparel and other children's products and childcare articles.

This act requires that children's products, children's toys and childcare articles for children under 12 must meet the corresponding total lead limit requirements and phthalate limit requirements. The specific provisions include: the total lead content in surface coating materials and substrates needs to be controlled to less than or equal to 100ppm in substrates and less than or equal to 90ppm in surface coatings; the content of 6 phthalates must be less than 0.1%; and ASTMF963-11 has become a mandatory toy safety standard.

In addition, products also need to have traceability labels and supplier declarations of conformity. A traceability label means providing an easily identifiable and unique marking on the product or its packaging; a supplier declaration of conformity needs to be supported by relevant test reports or a supplier guarantee letter.

EU Toy Safety Standard

The English abbreviation of the "EU Toy Safety Standard" is EN71 (2009/48/EC). It is the EU directive that directly governs toy safety, stipulating the toy safety quality requirements and conformity assessment procedures, and all toys entering the EU market should first meet the requirements of this directive. EN71 consists of 11 parts in total, of which the first three parts are mandatory tests - mechanical and physical properties, flammability, and migration of certain elements.

The specific provisions on mechanical and physical properties are as follows. Regarding small parts, toys for children under 3 years of age are not allowed to contain or produce small parts before or after normal use and abuse testing; toys that are not suitable for children under 3 years of age but may be hazardous to them should carry a warning. Regarding sharp edges, toys must not produce accessible dangerous sharp edges before or after abuse testing; some toys contain potentially dangerous edges as required by their function and need to carry a warning, but this applies only to toys for children aged 3 and above. Regarding sharp points, points accessible during normal use must not be dangerous sharp points; toys must not produce accessible dangerous sharp points after abuse testing; some toys contain potentially dangerous sharp points as required by their function and need to carry a warning, but this applies only to toys for children aged 3 and above.

EU REACH Regulation

The REACH Regulation is the "Registration, Evaluation, Authorisation and Restriction of Chemicals", a chemicals management regulation under which the EU conducts preventive management of all chemicals entering its market. It is similar to the registration, authorization and licensing systems for special products (goods).

The regulation was officially published by the EU on December 30, 2006 and took effect on June 1, 2007. This regulation consolidates all existing EU legislation on chemicals and imposes more obligations on manufacturers, distributors and end users. All products imported into the EU must comply with the REACH Regulation. The regulation requires that if a substance is intentionally released from an article under normal conditions of use and the annual import volume exceeds 1 tonne, the substance needs to be registered under the regulation.

At the same time, the regulation defines and publishes substances of very high concern (SVHC), and substances published as substances of very high concern need to be notified. On October 28, 2008, the European Chemicals Agency published the first candidate list of SVHCs. As of June 20, 2013, the SVHC candidate list had been updated 9 times. The currently officially published candidate list contains 144 SVHCs, including a variety of inorganic and organic substances, with applications across all industries.

Depending on the different risks of substances, the information to be communicated as required by REACH differs. To ensure that the chemical materials supplied by suppliers to the factory comply with REACH requirements, we need suppliers to provide the following information and materials: a list of related product materials such as paper, ink and glue, a substance composition table, substances of very high concern information, and a REACH conformity assessment report.

Regulations on Electrical and Electronic Equipment

The EU RoHS Directive is the "Directive on the Restriction of the Use of Certain Hazardous Substances in Electrical and Electronic Equipment", version 1.0 of which was issued on July 1, 2006. It requires restricting the use of 6 hazardous substances - lead, mercury, cadmium, hexavalent chromium, polybrominated biphenyls (PBB) and polybrominated diphenyl ethers (PBDE) - in electrical and electronic equipment products newly placed on the market. On July 1, 2011, version 2.0 of the standard was issued, adding technical documentation, conformity marking and self-declaration.

The printing industry itself does not produce the above electrical and electronic products, but if products are equipped with related accessories and sold to the European market together with paper products, then these accessories need to comply with the requirements of this directive.

In the fierce "green competition", testing that merely meets the requirements of individual laws and regulations can no longer satisfy the rapidly emerging environmental directives and the environmental requirements of buyers. How to promptly, effectively and systematically identify the directives of various countries on hazardous substance control, and how to systematically control customers' requirements for hazardous substances, have become problems we must solve. Therefore, introducing QC080000 has become our systematic method for solving this problem.

QC080000 is the "Requirements for Hazardous Substance Process Management System for Electronic and Electrical Components and Products", and it is the general name of the Hazardous Substance Process Management (HSPM) certification program developed by the International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC). It was published in March 2005 and revised in 2012. The establishment of this standard and its requirements is that ensuring the absence of prohibited hazardous substances in products and production processes depends on effective integrated management control. It is currently the hazardous substance management standard for enhancing enterprises' hazardous substance control capability and reducing their operational risks.

——This article is reprinted from China Packaging Network (pack.cn). Original link: http://news.pack.cn/show-361846.html