EU: Toy safety standard EN 71-3:2019+A1:2021 for migration of certain elements published

MAY 2021 - TOYS AND CHILDREN'S PRODUCTS

On 14 April 2021, the European Committee for Standardization (CEN) published the toy safety standard EN 71-3:2019+A1:2021¹: Migration of certain elements. All members of the CEN have to adopt and publish their national standard by 31 October 2021.

The current version EN 71-3:2019, which was harmonised in October 2019², continues to provide a presumption of conformity to the EU Toy Safety Directive 2009/48/EC until the new version has been published in the Official Journal of the European Union (OJEU).

The new standard incorporates the new limits for Aluminium in accordance with the Commission Directive (EU) 2019/1922³ which apply from 20 May 2021.

Element	Migration limit
Element	Category I	Category II	Category III
Aluminium	2250 mg/kg	560 mg/kg	28130 mg/kg

On EU’s Safety Gate⁴, notifications regarding an excessive migration of aluminium in painting toy materials such as wax crayons and face paint can be found. According to the European Writing Instrument Manufacturer’s Association (EWIMA)⁵, Kaolin and other clay minerals from natural sources are used in crayons, leads of coloured pencils, watercolour tablets and similar products as extenders or as binders, which are composed of aluminium, silicon and oxygen. Also, most of the coloured pencil leads and wax pastels contain aluminium coated titanium dioxide as a white colouring component.

Other changes made in this amendment also include the revised equation for calculating the amount of migrated Chromium (VI) (F.2), Annex ZA, bibliography and editorial of the standard.

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EU: Toy safety standard EN 71-3:2019+A1:2021 for migration of certain elements published

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