Safety Standard for Play Yards

<RULE> CONSUMER PRODUCT SAFETY COMMISSION <CFR>16 CFR Part 1221</CFR> <DEPDOC>[Docket No. CPSC-2011-0064]</DEPDOC> <SUBJECT>Safety Standard for Play Yards</SUBJECT> <HD SOURCE="HED">AGENCY:</HD> Consumer Product Safety Commission. <HD SOURCE="HED">ACTION:</HD> Direct final rule. <SUM> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUMMARY:</HD> In August 2012, the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC or Commission) published a consumer product safety standard for play yards pursuant to section 104 of the Consumer Product Safety Improvement Act of 2008 (CPSIA). The Commission's mandatory standard incorporates by reference ASTM F406, <E T="03">Standard Consumer Safety Specification for Non-Full-Size Baby Cribs/Play Yards,</E> with modifications that exclude sections of ASTM F406 that apply to non-full-size (NFS) cribs exclusively. The CPSIA sets forth a process for updating mandatory standards for durable infant or toddler products that are based on a voluntary standard, when a voluntary standards organization revises the standard. In September 2024, ASTM published a revised voluntary standard, and this direct final rule updates the mandatory standard for play yards to incorporate by reference the 2024 version of ASTM F406. </SUM> <EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">DATES:</HD> The rule is effective on April 5, 2025, unless the Commission receives a significant adverse comment by February 28, 2025. If the Commission receives such a comment, it will publish a notice in the <E T="04">Federal Register</E> , withdrawing this direct final rule before its effective date. The incorporation by reference of the publication listed in this rule is approved by the Director of the Federal Register as of April 5, 2025. </EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">ADDRESSES:</HD> You can submit comments, identified by Docket No. CPSC-2011-0064, 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. 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 to 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-2011-0064, into the “Search” box, and follow the prompts. <FURINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT:</HD> Frederick DeGrano, Project Manager, Division of Mechanical and Combustion Engineering, U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission, 5 Research Place, Rockville, MD 20850; telephone: (301) 987-2711; email: <E T="03">fdegrano@cpsc.gov.</E> </FURINF> <SUPLINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION:</HD> <HD SOURCE="HD1">I. Statutory Authority and Background</HD> <HD SOURCE="HD2">A. Statutory Authority</HD> Section 104(b) of the CPSIA requires the Commission to assess the effectiveness of voluntary standards for durable infant or toddler products  <SU>1</SU> <FTREF/> and adopt mandatory standards for these products. 15 U.S.C. 2056a(b)(1). Mandatory standards must be “substantially the same as” applicable voluntary standards, or they may be “more stringent” than the voluntary standards, if the Commission determines that more stringent requirements would further reduce the risk of injury associated with the products. <E T="03">Id.</E> Accordingly, mandatory standards may be based, in whole or in part, on a voluntary standard. <FTNT> <SU>1</SU>  Section 104(f)(2)(F) of the CPSIA lists play yards as a durable infant or toddler product. 15 U.S.C. 2056a(f)(2)(F). </FTNT> Section 104(b)(4)(B) of the CPSIA specifies the process for when a voluntary standards organization revises a standard the Commission has incorporated by reference under section 104(b)(1). 15 U.S.C. 2056a(b)(4)(B). First, the voluntary standards organization must notify the Commission of the revision. Once the Commission receives this notification, the Commission may reject or accept the revised standard. To reject a revised standard, the Commission must notify the voluntary standards organization within 90 days of receiving the notice of revision that the Commission has determined that the revised standard does not improve the safety of the consumer product and that CPSC is retaining the existing standard. If the Commission does not take this action, then the revised voluntary standard will be considered a consumer product safety standard issued under section 9 of the Consumer Product Safety Act (CPSA) (15 U.S.C. 2058), effective 180 days after the Commission received notification of the revision (or a later date specified by the Commission in the <E T="04">Federal Register</E> ). 15 U.S.C. 2056a(b)(4)(B). <HD SOURCE="HD2">B. Safety Standards for Play Yards</HD> On August 29, 2012, under section 104 of the CPSIA, the Commission published the first play yards rule that incorporated by reference ASTM F406-12a, <E T="03">Standard Consumer Safety Specification for Non-Full-Size Cribs/Play Yards,</E> as the mandatory standard, with modifications that exclude sections of ASTM F406-12a that apply to NFS cribs exclusively. 77 FR 52220, at 52226. <SU>2</SU> <FTREF/> <FTNT> <SU>2</SU>  Commission regulations for non-full-size baby cribs are at 16 CFR part 1220. </FTNT> CPSC regulations define a play yard, also known as a playpen, as “a framed enclosure that includes a floor and has mesh or fabric sided panels primarily intended to provide a play or sleeping environment for children. It may fold for storage or travel.” 16 CFR 1220.1(c)(2). After the publication of ASTM F406-12a, ASTM published revisions to ASTM F406 in 2013, 2019, and 2022. CPSC updated the play yard rule twice, adopting ASTM F406-13 in 2013 (78 FR 50328 (August 19, 2013)), and adopting ASTM F406-19 in 2019 (84 FR 56684 (October 23, 2019)). For both updates, CPSC accepted the revised voluntary standard as the mandatory standard for play yards and updated the incorporation by reference in 16 CFR part 1221 to reflect the revised voluntary standard. In both cases, CPSC also maintained the exceptions listed in section 1221.2(b), which lists sections of the voluntary standard that solely apply to NFS cribs and therefore are not incorporated in the play yards standard. CPSC declined to update the play yards rule based on the revisions in ASTMF406-22 because the Commission determined that adding performance requirements to allow mattresses greater than 1.5 inches was a reduction in safety. <SU>3</SU> <FTREF/> <FTNT> <SU>3</SU>  On February 22, 2023, the Commission voted unanimously (4-0) to determine that ASTM F406-22 does not improve the safety of play yards and that the Commission is retaining the existing standard for play yards in 16 CFR part 1221, available at <E T="03">https://www.cpsc.gov/content/RCA-ASTMs-Notice-of-a-Revised-Voluntary-Standard-for-Play-Yards.</E> </FTNT> On October 7, 2024, ASTM notified the Commission that it had approved and published a newly revised version of the voluntary standard, ASTM F406-24. As explained in section II.A of this preamble, ASTM F406-24 contains four substantive revisions that improve the safety of play yards. One clarifies the definitions of “play yard/non-full-size crib dependent accessory” and “full accessory.” The second addresses strangulation hazards by expanding the scope of the warning label requirements to all play yard accessories and not just those intended to be removed when the play yard is occupied. The third adds a new requirement to limit the length of loops for cords/straps and by specifying a test to measure the perimeter of cord/strap loops for play yards. Lastly, the fourth modifies the warning label requirements pertaining to products that have separate, removable mattresses that are not permanently fixed in place. Revisions to ASTM F406-24 include changes that remove the requirements, added in ASTM F406-22, for play yard mattresses 1.5 to 2 inches thick and the gap measurement test for play yard mattresses 1.5 to 2 inches thick. Removing these requirements reverts the voluntary standard to the previous requirements in ASTM F406-19 for mattress thickness and realigns the mattress requirements in the voluntary standard with 16 CFR part 1221; both limit play yards' mattress thickness to 1.5 inches. Therefore, these are not considered changes to the 2019 voluntary standard currently incorporated by reference in 16 CFR part 1221, and they have no impact on safety. Part II.B of this preamble describes non-substanti ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Preview showing 10k of 44k characters. Full document text is stored and available for version comparison. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━