Safety Standard for Toys: Requirements for Water Beads

CONSUMER PRODUCT SAFETY COMMISSION <CFR>16 CFR Parts 1112 and 1250</CFR> <DEPDOC>[CPSC Docket No. CPSC-2024-0027]</DEPDOC> <SUBJECT>Safety Standard for Toys: Requirements for Water Beads</SUBJECT> <HD SOURCE="HED">AGENCY:</HD> Consumer Product Safety Commission. <HD SOURCE="HED">ACTION:</HD> Notice of proposed rulemaking. <SUM> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUMMARY:</HD> The Consumer Product Safety Improvement Act of 2008 (CPSIA) mandates that ASTM F963 shall be a mandatory toy safety standard. This safety standard sets forth requirements for water bead toys and toys that contain water beads. The U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) proposes to establish additional performance and labeling requirements for these products. The Commission also proposes to amend CPSC's list of notice of requirements (NORs) to include water bead toys and toys that contain water beads. </SUM> <EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">DATES:</HD> Submit comments by November 8, 2024. </EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">ADDRESSES:</HD> Submit all comments, identified by Docket No. CPSC-2024-0027, by any of the following methods: <E T="03">Electronic Submissions:</E> Submit electronic comments to the Federal eRulemaking Portal at: <E T="03">https://www.regulations.gov.</E> Follow the instructions for submitting comments. Do not submit through this website: confidential business information, trade secret information, or other sensitive or protected information that you do not want to be available to the public. CPSC typically does not accept comments submitted by email, except as described below. <E T="03">Mail/Hand Delivery/Courier/Confidential Written Submissions:</E> CPSC encourages you to submit electronic comments by using the Federal eRulemaking Portal. You may, however, submit comments by mail, hand delivery, or courier to: Office of the Secretary, Consumer Product Safety Commission, 4330 East-West Highway, Bethesda, MD 20814; telephone: (301) 504-7479. If you wish to submit confidential business information, trade secret information, or other sensitive or protected information that you do not want to be available to the public, you may submit such comments by mail, hand delivery, or courier, or you may email them to: <E T="03">cpsc-os@cpsc.gov.</E> <E T="03">Instructions:</E> All submissions must include the agency name and docket number. CPSC may post all comments without change, including any personal identifiers, contact information, or other personal information provided, to <E T="03">https://www.regulations.gov.</E> Do not submit through this website: Confidential business information, trade secret information, or other sensitive or protected information that you do not want to be available to the public. If you wish to submit such information, please submit it according to the instructions for mail/hand delivery/courier/confidential written submissions. <E T="03">Docket:</E> For access to the docket to read background documents or comments received, go to: <E T="03">https://www.regulations.gov,</E> and insert the docket number, CPSC-2024-0027, into the “Search” box, and follow the prompts. <FURINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT:</HD> Matthew Kresse, Project Manager, Division of Mechanical Engineering, Directorate for Laboratory Sciences, Consumer Product Safety Commission, 5 Research Place, Rockville, MD 20850; Telephone 301-987-2222; email: <E T="03">mkresse@cpsc.gov.</E> </FURINF> <SUPLINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION:</HD> <HD SOURCE="HD1">I. Background and Statutory Authority</HD> Section 106(a) of the Consumer Product Safety Improvement Act of 2008 (CPSIA) made ASTM International's (ASTM) voluntary standard for toys, ASTM F963-07, <E T="03">Standard Consumer Safety Specification for Toy Safety</E> (except section 4.2 and Annex 4), a mandatory safety standard for toys beginning 180 days after the enactment date of the CPSIA. 15 U.S.C. 2056b(a). The CPSIA states that ASTM F963 shall be considered a consumer product safety standard issued by the Commission under section 9 of the Consumer Product Safety Act (15 U.S.C. 2058). Since 2009, CPSC has enforced ASTM F963 as a mandatory standard for toys. <E T="51">1 2</E> <FTREF/> In 2017, the Commission established 16 CFR part 1250, Safety Standard Mandating ASTM F963 for Toys, and it incorporated by reference the newly revised ASTM standard at that time, ASTM F963-16. 82 FR 8989 (Feb. 2, 2017). Most recently, on January 18, 2024, the Commission updated part 1250 to incorporate by reference a 2023 revision, ASTM F963-23. 89 FR 3344. <FTNT> <SU>1</SU>  Since 2009, ASTM revised F963 five times: ASTM F963-08, ASTM F963-11, ASTM F963-16, ASTM F963-17, and ASTM F963-23 (approved August 1, 2023). <SU>2</SU>  Section 3.1.91 of ASTM F963-23 (Toy): “Any object designed, manufactured, or marketed as a plaything for children under 14 years of age.” </FTNT> Section 4.40 of ASTM F963-23 includes requirements for toys, including but not limited to water beads, that are made of “Expanding Materials.”  <SU>3</SU> <FTREF/> However, the requirements currently in ASTM F963-23 for this category of toys appear insufficient to address all known water bead hazards. Potential hazards for “Expanding Materials” in general include gastrointestinal tract blockage if a child ingests a product comprised of expanding materials. Hazard mitigation provisions in ASTM F963-23 include performance requirements, but do not include warnings or instructional literature specifically tailored to the “Expanding Materials” requirements. While sections 5, 6, and 7 of ASTM F963-23 provide “Labeling Requirements,” “Instructional Literature” requirements, and “Producer's Markings” requirements generally for toys under the standard, none of these requirements is directed to water beads specifically. Thus, the generalized warnings and instructional literature requirements do not address all known hazards. <FTNT> <SU>3</SU>  Under ASTM F963, “Expanding Materials” are defined as “any material used in a toy which expands greater than 50% in any dimension from its as-received state.” </FTNT> Incident data, described in section III of this preamble, demonstrate that children ingest water beads, aspirate and choke on them, or insert them into the nose or ear, and subsequently suffer injury or death. Staff's testing of water beads, described in section IV of this preamble, further demonstrates that tested water beads that pass the performance requirements in ASTM F963-23 can still pose safety hazards. Accordingly, this notice of proposed rulemaking (NPR) under section 106 of the CPSIA proposes additional requirements in part 1250 to establish mandatory requirements specifically for water beads. <SU>4</SU> <FTREF/> Further, this NPR proposes revising the title of part 1250 from “Safety Standard Mandating ASTM F963 for Toys” to “Safety Standard for Toys,” to reflect the inclusion of proposed requirements that do not incorporate by reference existing requirements in ASTM F963. <E T="51">5 6</E> <FTREF/> <FTNT> <SU>4</SU>   <E T="03">https://www.cpsc.gov/content/FY-2024-Operating-Plan.</E> </FTNT> <FTNT> <SU>5</SU>  On August 21, 2024, the Commission voted unanimously (5-0) to publish this NPR. <SU>6</SU>  The information in this proposed rule is based in part on information and analysis in the July 31, 2024 Memorandum, Staff's Draft Proposed Rule for Safety Standard for Toys: Requirements for Water Beads, available at: <E T="03">https://www.bing.com/ck/a?!&&p=fcf3dff1c5f81972JmltdHM9MTcyNDI4NDgwMCZpZ3VpZD0wMDlhOTVlYi01OTI3LTYwZDYtMzEzYy04MTY1NTg2ODYxNGMmaW5zaWQ9NTIwNA&ptn=3&ver=2&hsh=3&fclid=009a95eb592760d6313c81655868614c&psq=Staff%e2%80%99s+Draft+Proposed+Rule+for+Safety+Standard+for+Toys%3a+Requirements+for+Water+Beads&u=a1aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cuY3BzYy5nb3YvczNmcy1wdWJsaWMvTm90aWNlLW9mLVByb3Bvc2VkLVJ1bGVtYWtpbmctUmVxdWlyZW1lbnRzLWZvci1XYXRlci1CZWFkcy5wZGY_VmVyc2lvbklkPTNreHZnemVNcElSSEphS1Eza25BNEczNnFWWjZFeVNp&ntb=1.</E> </FTNT> The Commission is authorized to issue this NPR pursuant to both section 106(c) and (d) of the CPSIA, 15 U.S.C. 2056b(c) and (d). Section 106(c) requires the Commission to periodically review and revise its mandatory toy safety standards to ensure that such standards provide the highest level of safety for toys that is feasible. Section 106(d) further requires the Commission to examine and assess the effectiveness of its mandatory toy safety standards in protecting children from safety hazards, and then it must promulgate consumer product safety rules that are more stringent than the existing standards if the Commission determinates that more stringent standards would further reduce the risk of injury associated with such toys. Consistent with the consultation requirement in section 106(d)(1) of the CPSIA, staff has worked with the ASTM F15.22 subcommittee task group since 2009 to update the toy standard and discuss hazards associated with water beads. This consultation, including sharing staff's assessment of hazards and suggested additional performance and labeling requirements, continued through revision and publication of ASTM F963-23. Building on staff's continued collaboration with ASTM and in consideration of the incident data, the Commission is issuing this NPR to address four identified hazard patterns associated with water beads that are not adequately addressed by the current mandatory standard provisions addressing Expanding Materials: (1) ingestion of water beads, (2) insertion of water beads into the nose or ear, (3) aspiration due to water beads, and (4) choking due to water beads. The Commission proposes adding additional performance requirements to part 1250 to better address these risks. The NPR also proposes establishing acrylamide level limits for water beads, which may contain this toxic chemical, and implementing new te ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Preview showing 10k of 168k characters. Full document text is stored and available for version comparison. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━