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EU: European Commission adopts lower aluminium migration limits in toys

NOVEMBER 2019 -TOYS AND CHILDREN'S PRODUCTS

In December 2018, we shared with you the news¹ that the European Commission (EC) proposed to adopt new aluminium migration limits in toys under the Toy Safety Directive 2009/48/EC. On 19 November 2019, the Directive (EU) 2019/1922², implementing this decision, was finally published in the Official Journal of the European Union (OJEU). The new requirement will take effect from 20 May 2021. The current and new limits are summarised in Table 1 below.

Based on the final opinion on aluminium in toys from the Scientific Committee on Health, Environmental and Emerging Risks (SCHEER), and recommendations from various parties including the writing materials industry and Expert Group on Toys Safety, the Commission has decided to lower the migration limits for all of the toy material categories.

Table 1. Summary of current and new aluminium limit values in toys

Compliance with the new migration limits can be demonstrated using the toy safety standard EN 71-3:2019, and its preceding version EN 71-3:2013+A3:2018, which will cease to provide presumption of conformity from 15 April 2020³.

The migration limits of elements from toys are updated from time to time. The last update⁴ was a tightened of limits for chromium (VI) on scrapped-off toy material, from 0.2 mg/kg to 0.053 mg/kg, which is already in force since 18 Nov 2019.

[1] Newsletter of EC proposes to strengthen aluminium limit in toys

[2] Directive (EU) 2019/1922

[3] Newsletter of EN 71-3:2019 is now harmonised under Toy Safety Directive

[4] Newsletter of EC adopts lower chromium VI limit in toys