Toy safety rules to be stricter

7 July 2011 Last updated at 11:16 GMT By Kevin Peachey Consumer affairs reporter, BBC News Details of toy safety requirements now run into hundreds of pages Stricter rules on toy safety will come into force this month making it easier for consumers and authorities to trace the origin of toys.

But the EU-wide regulations, which begin on 20 July, could increase costs for small businesses in the trade, an industry body has warned.

Under the new rules, importers will be responsible for ensuring that toys they bring into the EU are safe.

Contact details must also be carried on packaging.

Regulations

The requirements for toy safety have mushroomed over the last 50 years.

In 1968, the safety documentation on a Sindy doll ran to 16 pages. In 2010, the Dance With Me Teletubbies figurine required 1,692 pages of official paperwork.

Now, the new rules will outline specific responsibilities, placing a greater responsibility on importers and distributors.

A dangerous product identified in one EU member country already triggers an alert throughout Europe, but the new rules are aimed at improving the speed with which the source can be traced.

Surprise

The rules will tighten the rules of toys sold with food. Little figures tucked away, unpackaged, in cereal boxes and the like will be outlawed.

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It will be more difficult for start-up businesses to get established, which will lead to a concentration in the market”

End Quote Frank Martin Chief executive, Hornby But toys will be allowed to be contained within food if the toys have their own packaging that cannot be swallowed by a small child.

For example, a Kinder Surprise is a chocolate egg with a toy inside it, and the toy is inside a plastic cover. A spokeswoman for Ferrero, which makes them, said the packaging already complied with the new regulations as it carried a warning on the packaging such as "toy inside, adult supervision recommended".

Under the new rules, toys should also carry details of the manufacturer or importer on the packaging and possibly on the toy itself.

Frank Martin, chief executive of Hornby, said that its toys - which could often be very small - were engraved with a Hornby trademark and contact details were on the packaging.

He expected many small toys and multi-part toys to be marked in the same way.

However, he predicted that the next phase of regulations could be a barrier to entry for some smaller businesses. These rules, which come into force in July 2013 relate to required tests for the chemical content of toys - to protect children with allergies.

"It will be more difficult for start-up businesses to get established, which will lead to a concentration in the market," he said.

Many manufacturers already comply with the new regulations

Jerry Burnie, of the British Toy and Hobby Association, agreed that small businesses could find it tough in what is already a competitive market.

That was because these firms had to pay a testing lab to carry out the checks, unlike larger manufacturers which did the tests in-house. The third-party testing labs were likely to increase charges owing to the greater workload, and so the small manufacturers would be hit "disproportionately".

Wow Toys, a small manufacturer based in London, said it would be facing extra costs because of the higher testing fees, although it was confident of passing the higher standards.

"This new directive, or any upcoming new standard could be very challenging for some companies, but would not be an issue for a responsible or well-prepared one," said its operations manager Lewis Liu.

Other design changes will come into force in 2013, such as regulations on the length of cables for pull-along toys. They will actually be extended to make the toy less likely to be swung around by a small child.

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DuPont is criticised over safety

7 July 2011 Last updated at 23:23 GMT DuPont said it was continuing to cooperate with authorities A number of safety failings by chemical maker DuPont resulted in the death of a worker at one of its US plants, a federal authority has ruled.

Carl Fish, 58, died at the company's Belle facility in West Virginia, in January 2010, when he was accidentally sprayed with the deadly chemical phosgene.

The US Chemical Safety Board (CSB) said DuPont had used old chemical tubes and relied too much on automated software.

DuPont said safety is its core aim.

Mr Fish was sprayed with phosgene when a cable leading from a storage tank frayed.

The accident happened a day after two other chemicals were accidentally leaked at the same Dupont facility - methyl chloride and oleum, a type of sulphuric acid.

There were no reported injuries in those two cases.

Rafael Moure-Eraso, CSB chairman, said: "We at the Chemical Safety Board were quite surprised and alarmed to learn that DuPont had not one, but three preventable accidents that occurred over a 33-hour period."

Dupont said it had completed its own investigation and was continuing to cooperate with the CSB.

Phosgene is used to make herbicide.

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Safety pin

28 June 2011 Last updated at 22:16 GMT By Kevin Peachey Personal finance reporter, BBC News Many of the suggestions dealt with awareness of those around the ATM user Have you ever stood at a cash machine and received a friendly tap on the shoulder to alert you to a discarded ?20 note on the ground?

If so, then shortly afterwards - after you crouched to pick it up - you probably noticed that your card and perhaps the cash you were withdrawing had disappeared.

Some ?33m was lost to cash-machine fraud in the UK in 2010.

Although the figure has been falling in recent years, the industry is still trying to find ways of reducing it further.

As part of this, 13 students were commissioned to come up with designs to make ATM use safer.

Not all of their ideas will make it into production, but some - which have been exhibited at Central St Martins College in London - do raise some interesting views on how consumers can be safer when they take out their cash.

Vision

ATM fraud caused losses of ?45.7m in 2008 and ?36.7m in 2009 in the UK.

Much of this was the result of distraction thefts, and some of the ideas in the Design Against Crime exhibition highlighted ways of ensuring strangers, and potential thieves, did not enter the ATM users' personal space.

ATM ball mirrors by Satoru Kusakabe allows people to see who is around them, by attaching the two round mirrors in their peripheral vision at either side of the ATM.

Some of the designs were relatively simple, such as this queue pole

"It should be cheap and easy to fit," says the 26-year-old student from Tokyo.

The design caught the attention of Graham Mott, head of development at Link, which oversees the UK's ATM network.

"Some ideas are more practical than others, and this would be very easy to do," he says.

"This is an evolving process. We have seen over time that criminals' techniques have changed, so we need to change, too."

Another way of keeping strangers back from an ATM when it is in use is Philemon Tcherkassof's queue pole, which he says taps into people's subconscious by making them wait behind the physical boundary.

Similar techniques have been trialled to create a safe space around ATMs, such as a marked box, and even street art, which prevents people standing too close to the cash-machine user.

Pin protection

Marcus Willcocks, research fellow at Central St Martins, who oversaw the project, says that the students were given a brief to reduce the opportunities for thieves.

The precaution system by Zsofia Ujhelyi aims to ensure people shield the keypad

This could include preventing the snatching of cash, and reducing the chances of opportunists peering over the shoulder of somebody at a cash machine.

Many machines carry a warning to users to ensure they shield the keypad when entering their four-digit Pin code.

Zsofia Ujhelyi, a 24-year-old student from Budapest, has created a design which means the ATM will not work unless the keypad is shielded.

Users would have to press a series of buttons with the side of their hand to show that they are covering the keypad when entering their Pin.

Charlie Rohan, of NCR, a major manufacturer of ATMs which part-funded the project, says the students' ideas will feed into work carried out by the company's own engineers in Dundee.

Some designs, he admits, will be rejected because of practicalities - such as requirements that the machines do not cause a problem on narrow pavements. These issues often arise when planning permission is sought for new ATM locations.

A new range of ATM designs is brought out every three-to-five years, including new behind-the-screen protection technology, but machines need to be made so they can be updated and upgraded.

Ultimately, he says, designs should encourage people to change their behaviour to ensure they protect their card and code.

NCR has also funded work from Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands.

Students there will exhibit their ideas this week on how technology can be used to reduce ATM fraud.

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