Section 102 of CPSIA established new testing and certification requirements for children’s products as well as non-children’s products. Non-children’s products must be tested to a reasonable testing program which ensures the product is compliant with any applicable rules, bans, standards or regulations enforced by the CPSC. A General Conformity Certificate must then be issued indicating compliance with any applicable requirements.
Children’s products must be tested to all applicable requirements by a CPSC accredited third-party conformity assessment body. Based on this testing, the manufacturer must issue a Children’s Product Certificate indicating ompliance with all required rules, bans, standards or regulations enforced by the CPSC for the product.
Highlights: The Proposed Rule, to be published as 16 CFR 1107, gives guidelines for the following items:
A reasonable testing program must have:
• Records of product specifications
• A testing element which tests an adequate number of samples to give a high degree of assurance (HDoA) that the product complies to any requirements
• A production testing plan indicating a frequency of testing and testing quantity to give an HDoA of compliance
• A remedial action plan for any non-compliance
• Full record-keeping for the time a product is distributed plus three years
Third-party testing of children’s products must have:
• Testing of sufficient samples to give an HDoA that the product complies with all requirements.
Periodic testing:
>1 year maximum interval between testing
>production of less than 10,000 units is exempt from one year periodic requirement
• Random sample testing via simple random sampling ensuring each product produced since the last periodic test has an equal chance of selection
• Re-certification after any material change; Can be conducted independently on a component part as component part testing without a full product test, if appropriate
• Remedial action for any test failure during certification, periodic, or verification testing
• All required records maintained for the time a product is distributed plus three years
Acceptable labeling for compliant products:
• It has been proposed that a certified compliant product may contain the label:
“Meets CPSC Safety Requirements”