Toy safety

Safety Gate/RAPEX

The EU’s Safety Gate/RAPEX contains notifications from Member States about products presenting a serious risk to consumers.   

The data on the Safety Gate website has been collected over many years, so the EU has an excellent resource to help to understand what goes wrong.

From January 2019 to September 2022, there have been 7931 safety alerts – 1980 of these alerts related to toys and 1627 of them were from China.

Risks

Two types of risks in toys account for most safety alerts.

Choking risks are commonly caused by small parts on the toy which can easily be detached and swallowed by a child.

Chemical risks can be associated with the materials that the toy is made from or perhaps its coating of paint.

Both risks, choking and chemical, recognise the hazard from children putting toys into their mouths – everyone is familiar with the fact that children will do this.

Responsibilities

The EU’s approach to product safety places particular emphasis on the manufacturer. Everyone in the supply chain has some responsibility. It is, however, clear that if a manufacturer makes safe products, it is much more likely that only safe products will reach EU consumers.

Other sections in this module provide more detail about the main responsibilities, however a brief overview about the steps that must be taken by manufacturers of toys for the EU market includes:

1) The manufacturer must think about the design of the product and ensure that it meets safety objectives – there are European technical standards which can help.

2) The manufacturer must ensure that their toys do indeed conform with the legal requirements. There is a conformity assessment process that they will need to follow.

3) The manufacturer will need to make a declaration of conformity in writing that their products do conform with the requirements as well as create a file of evidence – known as a technical file. They should keep this information for 10 years as it may be needed if something goes wrong.

4) All toys must be CE marked. The CE mark is the visible declaration of the manufacturer on the product itself to demonstrate that they have carried out all the necessary checks and that their product conforms with all legal requirements of the EU. The CE mark enables products to circulate freely between EU Member States. It signals to the EU consumers that a product is safe and they can trust it.

5) Finally, there are other labelling requirements that must be considered, which include the manufacturer’s name, the batch or serial number (or other toy identification) and any necessary warnings relating to the safe use of the toy such as age restrictions.