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An Enhanced Safety Assessment Model for Toy Products S. L. Mak

H. K. Lau

School of Science and Technology, The Open University of Hong Kong, 30 Good Shepherd Street, Ho Man Tin, Kowloon, Hong Kong, China. [email protected]

School of Science and Technology, The Open University of Hong Kong, 30 Good Shepherd Street, Ho Man Tin, Kowloon, Hong Kong, China. [email protected]

Abstract—The world toy market has been growing since last decade although the birth rate is declining in the western developed countries. Many consumers are willing to pay more for safer products. Manufacturers are eager to design and make the innovative toy products to compete the market share. Previous researchers had investigated how to translate the customer‟s need to the technical requirement of a new product. In the current toy product safety testing, the third party testing laboratories just followed the mandatory safety regulations and standards to test the products. But the risk of the innovative features may not be identified to cause hazards. This paper discussed the limitation of the current safety model and proposed a new assessment model to include the risk assessment among children‟s behavior. The typical children‟s behavior and recall cases were used to describe the detail of risk assessment. Keywords— Product Safety, Toys, Safety Risk Assessment, Safety Standards, Product Recall

I.

INTRODUCTION

Business organizations are faced with an economic environment in which a fast response to rapid changing customer‟s requirements and the market environment is necessary. The manufacturers are seeking a solution to reduce the product development cycle. There are many innovative toys products were made in the last decades, such as using Apple iphone to control the helicopters and the Universal Serial Bus (USB) MSN Missile Launcher [1-2]. On the other hand, the customers are willing to pay more if they can use more safe and reliable products. Many countries required to provide valid certifications when they imported the toys and juvenile products. The Consumer Product Safety Improvement Act (CPSIA) of 2008, United States required to have a written Product Certificate (issued by the manufacturer or importer) that provides evidence of the product‟s compliance and Toys & Children‟s products must be tested by a CPSC accredited third party laboratory from February 2013. The samples of continuing production must be retested periodically to ensure ongoing compliance.

Some research works have been done in the areas of transforming customer‟s requirement to features of the toys products [3]. These helped the business organizations to shorten the product development cycle and produce more innovative products. However the safety aspect of these innovative products may be ignored. Nevertheless, the governments and standards bodies had paid much effort to analyze the recall cases and establish the new requirements into toys safety regulations and standards, the number of injuries and death cases did not decrease due to unsafe toys in the United States in the last 10 years [4]. The study of new safety regulations/standards are based on the historical injuries and death cases. For example: the ASTM F963 Standard Consumer Safety Specification for Toy Safety was revised in 2003 and 2007. The requirement of “Hemispheric-Shaped Objects” was added into the 2003 edition because a product recall and death case occurred [5]. The requirement of “Magnets” was added into the 2007 edition because a serious injuries and many magnetic product was recalled from the US market [6-7]. II.

CHARACTERISTICS OF THE BEST SELL TOYS

Many designers and manufacturers are trying to find the best ways to reduce the product development cycle and produce best sell toys. Some researchers had suggested the concurrent customer-oriented design method for developing a new product by adopting (1) Quality Function Deployment (QFD); (2) Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP); (3) Design For Assembly (DFA); and (4) Failure Mode and Effects Analysis (FMEA). The purpose is to (1) translate customers‟ requirements into the technical requirements for each stage of product development and production; (2) reduces manufacturing costs by reducing the total number of individual parts in a product; and (3) prevent failures and defects from occurring and reaching the customer [3]. In addition to systematic translation of consumer‟s need, the gender‟s behavior and the proper age grading shall be identified correctly. For example, girls will always want to comb a doll‟s hair, to touch the doll, or dress her [8]. Three years old children are entering the time of peak pretend play,

and like to use replica objects as the actors in themes they sequence [9]. In general, good toys (1) shall catch children‟s eye and bring the basic needs experience of fun, entertainment and learning; (2) provide creative interactional experience to the children;(3) involve real emotional interaction feature, such as make a counterpart of a real TV remote control, mobile phone; (4) provide some custom setting features to the users as children are likely to compare with each other; (5) involves some features, so the parents play with the children; (6) consider child‟s living environment, make it accompany with the growth of child; and (7) satisfy the child‟s emotional needs.

[10]. It is one of most important children‟s behaviors that we concerns in the toys safety. It is a requirement in all toys safety standards that no small part is allowed to be played by under 36 months children because the children may put the small part into their mouth and cause a fatal choking hazard. The standard bodies collected anthropometric data to design a small part cylinder (Figure 3) for scanning the hazard; it is widely adopted in toys, children‟s and nursery products safety regulations/standards.

Fig. 2. Estimated mean daily mouthing time for toys according to how they are mouthed (hours: minutes: seconds).

Fig. 1.

The essential factor of good toys

III.

EXAMPLES OF CHILDREN PLAYING BEHAVIOR

Many psychologists have conducted the children‟s behavior researches in the last decades. It is known that children‟s behavior is quite difference from adult‟s behavior and the children‟s basic abilities and preferences changes as they grow. These abilities and preferences play an important role in attracting and motivating children to interact with toys. A higher level of fine-motor skill permits greater manipulation of objects. CPSC published an Age Determination Guidelines in September 2002 [9]. It pointed out that most „birth to 3 months‟ children are having a reflexive grasp, which only allows them to explore objects briefly, and at „3 months‟ they begin to swipe or reach towards a dangling object to grasp it. Any object grasped is likely to be mouthed and to be handled with jerky, unpredictable motions. Furthermore, research into the mouthing behavior of children up to 5 years old was conducted by Department of Trade and Industry of UK in 2002, the result shows how toys were mouthed at each age group and it was also found that children within 0 to 36 months are likely to put the toys into their mouth (Figure 2)

Fig. 3.

Small Parts Cylinders [12]

Unfortunately, this cannot protect the children effectively. Several serious suffocation cases were recalled from 1983 to 2000. We will discuss such cases in the later section.

IV.

CURRENT TOY SAFETY ASSESSMENT MODEL

In the current product safety assessment model, the safety testing and assessment is performed by an accredited third party testing party when the final products are made as shown in Figure 4. It is found that this model may not be effective to minimize the unsafe products in the market.

Fig. 4.

agencies only concerned some small size components because it would cause the choking hazards when the children swallowed it. It is found that not only such component causes serious problems. An oversized, plastic toy nail (Figure 6) that can pose a choking hazard to young children in the 2011 [12]. If we put this case into our safety assessment model, we will consider the child behavior. The child is likely to put the plastic nail into the mouth and would accidently swallowed it. It would block the child‟s throat and cause the choking hazard as shown in Figure 7.

Current Product Safety Testing Model

Furthermore, some research works found that the manufacturers offered some toys not matching what the children‟s needs [9]. This may cause the hazards to the children. For example: the toys contains some small size of components, it may detach after several playing cycle. But it still may pass the toys safety regulations/standards because such small size of components only went through one cycle of the reasonable foreseeable abuse testing, such as ASTM F96311 Standard Consumer Safety Specification for Toy Safety, section 8.6. In the latest version of safety standard, it does not require to go through the endurance testing [11]. V.

Fig. 5.

New Safety assessment model

THE PROPOSED TOY SAFETY TESTING MODEL

We mentioned that the fast response is vital to the business organization competing in the market. The experience of injuries and death cases cannot thoroughly be solved all potential hazards of numerous innovative toys products. As we discussed in the previous paragraph, some new requirements were added in the product safety regulations and standards due to some serious injuries or recall cases. But we are interested if such serious injuries can be avoided by a new safety assessment model as shown in Figure 5. We proposed a new toy safety assessment model in this paper. In the traditional model, the stage 4 only follows the regulatory third party testing. The laboratory only follows the mandatory safety standards and regulations to test the product. Differentiating with the traditional model, the third party testing will include two parts. One is to follow the safety regulations and standards to test whether the product is safe. The other one is to perform a risk assessment among the child play behavior by an experienced specialist. If adopting this model, some injuries and death cases could be avoided. For example: the infants and children are likely to put their hands or other things into their mouths. In the past, the standard bodies and regulatory

Fig. 6. Plastic Nails Source: http://www.cpsc.gov/Recalls/2011/Little-Tikes-Expands-Recall-ofToy-Workshop-and-Tool-Sets-Due-to-Choking-Hazard/

Fig. 7. Plastic nail blocks the child‟s throat Modified from http://medical-dictionary.thefreedictionary.com/epiglottis

In the risk assessment among the child play behavior, we shall consider anthropometric data of children to evaluate the potential risk of product feature. This is a traditional approach in safety standard development, but not being adopted in the third party testing laboratories. For example: The mean Nasion-menton distance (Table 1) was considered in the suffocation hazard of thin plastic sheet. In the European Toys Safety standard, EN71 Part 1: 2011 version clause 6 required that the average plastic bag thickness shall be at least 0.038 mm if the opening perimeter of plastic bag is larger than 380 mm [13]. The rationale is the children‟s head can enter into the bag which may cause the suffocation hazard. In the ASTM F963-96a or previous editions have similar requirement, the thickness of the plastic bag shall be at least 0.00150 in. (0.03810 mm) in nominal thickness, but the actual thickness shall never be less than 0.00125 in. (0.03175 mm) if the opening perimeter of the bags is greater than 14 in. (360 mm) and the sum of the depth and fully extended opening perimeter of the bag is greater than 23 in. (584 mm) [14]. Afterwards, the ASTM F963-03 has required the plastic bags to meet the thickness requirement if the area of plastic bag is greater than 3.94 in. (100 mm) x 3.94 in. (100 mm). This size can fully cover the mouth and the nose of children under six years old based on the anthropometric data [5].

TABLE I.

the bluebird toy became stuck over the noses and mouths of young children's faces by suction. B. Case 2: Recall of Pokémon Ball Pokémon balls (Figure 8) are red plastic spherical-shaped containers between 2 ¾" and 3" in diameter. The balls may pose a suffocation hazard to children less than three years. Pokémon Either half of the Pokémon ball can become stuck on a child's face, covering the nose and mouth and may cause suffocation of a child under three years. A 13-month-old girl reportedly suffocated when one-half of a Pokémon ball covered her nose and mouth. An 18-monthold girl reportedly also had a ball-half stuck over her face, causing her distress.

FACIAL ANTHROPOMETRIC DATA OF CHILDREN [13]

Fig. 8. Pokémon Ball Source: http://www.cpsc.gov/en/Recalls/2000/CPSC-Burger-KingCorporation-Announce-Voluntary-Recall-of-Pokemon-Ball-/

Facial Measurements (in Inches)

VI.

C. Case 3: Recall of Tangled Treeples toys The toy is a green plastic container (Figure 9) with small, blue plastic animal figures inside. The bottom of the container can fit over a child's nose and mouth, which could pose a suffocation hazard to children under three-year old. A 19month-old girl reportedly had the container stuck over her face, causing her distress.

THE EFFECTIVENESS OF THE PROPOSED TOYS SAFETY ASSESSMENT MODEL

By introducing the proposed toy safety assessment model, we had reviewed the 995 CPSC toys recall cases. There were three recall cases that the products complied with the corresponding toys safety regulations/standards before the retailer put the products into the market. Unfortunately, it caused serious suffocation incidents. The third party testing laboratory did not evaluate the children‟s behavior in the testing. A. Case 1: Recall of Splash & Stack Bluebird Toy Part The "Splash & Stack Bluebird" is a 5-piece stacking toy, the head of which is blue in color with an orange beak. When stacked the toy resembles a bird sitting in a nest. The head of

Fig. 9. Tangled Treeples container Source: http://www.cpsc.gov/en/Recalls/2000/CPSC-KFC-CorporationAnnounce-Recall-of-Toy-Included-With-KFC-Kids-Meals/

By adopting the proposed toys safety assessment model, we will evaluate that the size of product is between 2 to 4 inches in diameter. It would fully cover the mouth and nose of children from birth to 6 years old by checking the anthropometric data. Furthermore, several papers already pointed out that such age group children is likely to put the toys into their mouth. We can conclude that the products were high risk to the children.

[5]

[7]

Child's Death Prompts Replacement Program of Magnetic Building Sets Available from http://www.cpsc.gov/cpscpub/prerel/prhtml06/06127.html Accessed on May 15, 2013

VII. CONCLUSION

[8]

Sun, Hongyi, and Wong Chung Wing. "Critical success factors for new product development in the Hong Kong toy industry." Technovation 25.3 (2005): pp. 293-303.

[9]

CPSC, Age Determination Guidelines: Relating Children‟s Ages To Toy Characteristics and Play Behaviour on September 2002 Available from www.cpsc.gov/BUSINFO/adg.pdf Accessed on May 15, 2013

[10]

Department of Trade and Industry of UK , Consumer and Competition Policy Directorate, Research into the mouthing behaviour of children up to 5 years old in 2002 Available from http://webarchive.nationalarchives.gov.uk/+/http:/www.berr.gov.uk/file s/file21800.pdf Accessed on July 9, 2013

[11]

ASTM F963-2011 Standard Consumer Safety Specification for Toy Safety

[12]

Little Tikes Expands Recall of Toy Workshop and Tool Sets Due to Choking Hazard Available from http://www.cpsc.gov/Recalls/2011/Little-TikesExpands-Recall-of-Toy-Workshop-and-Tool-Sets-Due-to-ChokingHazard/ Accessed on May 15, 2013

[13]

CEN, EN71-1: 2011 Specification for Mechanical and Physical Properties, 2011

[14]

ASTM F963-96a Standard Consumer Safety Specification for Toy Safety

This paper reviewed the current assessment model with some cases and its effectiveness. A modified toy product safety assessment model is also proposed in this paper. It is noticed from the statistics that the trend of toys related injuries and death case is still growing, although various regulatory committees have put continuing efforts to enhance the toys safety regulations and standards in the past years. The proposed model can bridge the gap between the innovative toy product design and the third party safety testing.

REFERENCES [1]

iphone Controlled Helicopters, RC Cars, Wall Climbing Cars, Insects and UFO‟s Available from http://www.ihelicopters.net/ Accessed on May 15, 2013

[2]

USB MSN Missile Launcher Available from http://usb.brando.com/prod_detail.php?prod_id=00401 Accessed on May 15, 2013

[3]

Hsiao, Shih-Wen. "Concurrent design method for developing a new product."International Journal of Industrial Ergonomics 29.1 (2002): pp. 41-55.

[4]

S L Mak, H K Lau (2012), “Toy Safety Regulations and Standards in the United States”, Annual Journal IIE (HK), Vol.32 (2011/2012) pp.24-34

[6]

ASTM F963-2003 Standard Consumer Safety Specification for Toy Safety ASTM F963-2007 Standard Consumer Safety Specification for Toy Safety