Mandatory Toy Safety Standards: Requirements for Neck Floats

CONSUMER PRODUCT SAFETY COMMISSION <CFR>16 CFR Parts 1112 and 1250</CFR> <DEPDOC>[CPSC Docket No. CPSC-2024-0039]</DEPDOC> <SUBJECT>Mandatory Toy Safety Standards: Requirements for Neck Floats</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 toy safety standard sets forth only minimal labeling requirements for aquatic toys such as neck floats. The U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC or Commission) proposes to establish new performance and revised labeling requirements to address potentially deadly hazards associated with neck floats. The Commission also proposes to amend CPSC's list of notice of requirements (NORs) to include neck floats. </SUM> <EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">DATES:</HD> Submit comments by January 21, 2025. Submit comments related to the Paperwork Reduction Act aspects of the marking, labeling, and instructional literature requirements by January 21, 2025 </EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">ADDRESSES:</HD> Submit all comments, identified by Docket No. CPSC-2024- 0039, 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-2024-0039, into the “Search” box, and follow the prompts. <FURINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT:</HD> Zachary Goldstein, Project Manager, Division of Mechanical Engineering, Directorate for Laboratory Sciences, Consumer Product Safety Commission, 5 Research Place, Rockville, MD 20850; telephone 301-987-2472; email: <E T="03">zgoldstein@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 sections 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 (CPSA; 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 codified the mandatory toy standard in 16 CFR part 1250, Safety Standard Mandating ASTM F963 for Toys, and 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 the CPSIA's enactment in 2008, 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 3.1.92 of ASTM F963-23 defines a toy as: “Any object designed, manufactured, or marketed as a plaything for children under 14 years of age.” </FTNT> ASTM F963-23 and 16 CFR part 1250 contain requirements for a category of toys known as “aquatic toys.” Section 3.1.4 of ASTM F963-23 defines an aquatic toy as an “an article, whether inflatable or not, intended to bear the mass of a child and used as an instrument of play in shallow water. This does not include bath toys, beach balls, and United States Coast Guard-approved life saving devices.” 16 CFR part 1250. Section 5.4 of ASTM F963-23 (which is an element of the mandatory standard pursuant to CPSIA section 106 and 16 CFR part 1250) contains labeling requirements for “aquatic toys,” which include neck floats. The ASTM requirements are intended to communicate to the consumer that an aquatic toy is not a lifesaving device and to warn against leaving a child unattended while using the flotation device. However, as discussed in section IV of this preamble, ASTM F963-23 does not establish adequate requirements specific to neck floats because it does not include any performance requirements for these toys. Incident data, described in section III of this preamble, demonstrate that children have suffered drowning injuries and deaths associated with the use of neck floats. Accordingly, as described in section IV of this preamble, neck floats that comply with the labeling requirements in ASTM F963-23 still pose safety hazards. This notice of proposed rulemaking (NPR) under section 106 of the CPSIA proposes additional requirements in part 1250 to establish a mandatory standard for neck floats which includes performance requirements and improved warning labels. CPSC proposes to define a “neck float” as “an article, whether inflatable or not, that encircles the neck, supports the weight of the child by being secured around the neck (such as by fastening, tightening, or other methods), and is used as an instrument of play in water environments including sinks, baths, paddling pools, and swimming pools, and is intended for use by children up to and including 4 years of age.” Further, this NPR proposes revising the title of part 1250 from “Safety Standard Mandating ASTM F963 for Toys” to “Safety Standards for Toys,” to reflect the inclusion of additional proposed requirements that are not included in the existing requirements in ASTM F963. <E T="51">3 4</E> <FTREF/> <FTNT> <SU>3</SU>  On October 23, 2024, the Commission voted (5-0) to publish this NPR. <SU>4</SU>  On September 9, 2024, the Commission published an NPR to establish a mandatory standard for water beads, under Section 106(a) of the Consumer Product Safety Improvement Act of 2008 (CPSIA). <E T="03">Safety Standard for Toys: Requirements for Water Beads,</E> 89 FR 73024. This NPR also proposed to revise the title of part 1250 from “Safety Standard Mandating ASTM F963 for Toys” to “Safety Standards for Toys.” </FTNT> The Commission is authorized to issue this NPR pursuant to both sections 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 to promulgate consumer product safety standards that are more stringent than existing the existing standards if the Commission determines 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. In addition, since August 2021, CPSC staff has been corresponding with the relevant ASTM Subcommittee and task group to discuss hazards associated with neck floats, including by sharing incident data associated with neck floats as well as staff's recommendation to develop performance requirements to address the hazards identified in the incident data. 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 neck floats that are not adequately addressed by the current mandatory standard provision addressing aquatic toys. Specifically, the Commission proposes to address the following known hazards: (1) children slipping through the product due to deflation or underinflation; (2) children slipping through the product for reasons other than deflation or underinflation; (3) children slipping through the product due to a re ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Preview showing 10k of 183k characters. Full document text is stored and available for version comparison. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━