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New Amendment of ISO 8124-3 on migratable elements published

october 2018- Relevant for: toys and children's products

Recently, the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) published amendment 2 (Amd 2)¹ to toy standard ISO 8124-3:2010 Migration of certain elements to revise the limits for finger paint. In this amendment, ISO lowers migration limits of antimony (Sb), arsenic (As), cadmium (Cd), lead (Pb), mercury (Hg) and selenium (Se) for finger paint, while higher the limit of barium (Ba). There is also an exception for element chromium (Cr) which remains unchanged. The comparison of new and old limits for finger paint is showed in Table 1.

There are two sets of migration limits in the previous version of the standard. One is for modelling clay and finger paint, and another one is for other materials for toys. Considering the specifical exposure conditions for finger paint compared with other toy materials, ISO standard committee reduced the limits of certain elements for finger paint to further protect children’s health. That makes the standard now has three different sets of migration limits for modelling clay, finger paint and other toy materials respectively.

Table 1.

[1] ISO 8124-3:2010/Amd 2:2018