Safety Standard for Toys: Requirements for Water Beads

<RULE> 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> Final rule. <SUM> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUMMARY:</HD> Section 106(a) of 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. Under this statutory authority, the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC or Commission) is issuing a safety standard for water bead toys and toys that contain water beads. </SUM> <EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">DATES:</HD> The rule is effective on March 12, 2026. The incorporation by reference of the publication listed in this rule is approved by the Director of the Federal Register as of March 12, 2026. The incorporation by reference of certain other material listed in this rule was approved for use by the Director of the Federal Register as of April 20, 2024. </EFFDATE> <FURINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT:</HD> Sara E. Brown, Compliance Officer, Office of Compliance, Consumer Product Safety Commission, 4330 East West Highway, Bethesda, MD 20814-4408; telephone: 240-749-0572; email: <E T="03">sebrown@cpsc.gov</E> or 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> <HD SOURCE="HD2">A. Background</HD> Section 106(a) of the 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 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 the 2023 revision, ASTM F963-23. 89 FR 3344. <FTNT> <SU>1</SU>  Since 2009, ASTM has 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 are insufficient to address all known water bead toy hazards. Potential hazards for expanding materials in general include gastrointestinal tract blockage if a child ingests a product comprised of expanding materials. The 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 bead toys 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 the preamble of the NPR and 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 bead toys, described in the preamble of the NPR, further demonstrates that tested water beads that pass the performance requirements in ASTM F963-23 can still pose safety hazards. Accordingly, this rule under section 106 of the CPSIA creates additional requirements in part 1250 to establish mandatory requirements specifically for water bead toys. Further, this rule revises the title of part 1250 from “Safety Standard Mandating ASTM F963 for Toys” to “Safety Standard for Toys,” to reflect the inclusion of requirements that do not incorporate by reference existing requirements in ASTM F963. <HD SOURCE="HD2">B. Statutory Authority</HD> The Commission is authorized to issue this final rule 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 to promulgate consumer product safety rules that are more stringent than 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 and discuss hazards associated with water bead toys. This consultation, including the sharing of staff's assessment of hazards and staff's suggested additional performance and labeling requirements, continued through the revision and publication of ASTM F963-23. <HD SOURCE="HD2">C. Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (NPR)</HD> On September 9, 2024, the Commission published an NPR to address four identified hazard patterns associated with water bead toys that are not adequately addressed by the current mandatory standard provisions addressing expanding materials: (1) ingestion of water bead toys, (2) insertion of water bead toys into the nose or ear, (3) aspiration due to water bead toys, and (4) choking due to water bead toys. 89 FR 73024. The Commission proposed adding additional performance requirements to part 1250 to better address these risks. The NPR also proposed establishing acrylamide level limits for water bead toys in response to toxicity hazards when water bead toys containing acrylamide enter the body, and implementing new testing requirements for acrylamide in water bead toys under part 1250. Finally, the Commission proposed labeling requirements for water bead toys under part 1250, including mandating warnings and instructional literature on products within scope of the proposed rule. <HD SOURCE="HD2">D. Final Rule Overview</HD> Pursuant to section 106 of the CPSIA, 15 U.S.C. 2056b, the Commission is issuing a mandatory standard for water bead toys based on the proposed requirements in the NPR, with certain modifications in response to public comments and other clarifications, which are discussed in detail in sections V and VI of the preamble. <SU>4</SU> <FTREF/> The final rule defines a “water bead” as “a various shaped liquid absorbent polymer, composed of materials such as, but not limited to, polyacrylamide and polyacrylate, which expands when soaked in liquid.” This rule is intended to reduce the risk of injury or death associated with children ingesting, inserting into their ear or nose, aspirating, or choking on water bead toys by setting a maximum expansion size limit for water bead toys. The rule also is intended to reduce the risks of acrylamide exposure from water bead toys, by setting limits on the amount of allowable acrylamide in water bead toys. Finally, the rule requires strongly worded, conspicuous warnings. <FTNT> <SU>4</SU>  On August 21, 2025, the Commission voted (2-0) to publish this final rule. </FTNT> Based on comments received on the NPR and clarifications found to be necessary to the rule, the following changes have been made in the final rule: • The references to “water” in the definition of water bead in proposed section 1250.4(b) has been revised to the broader term “liquid” in the final rule. • In section 1250.4(c)(1) of the final rule, the proposed funnel test gauge diameter has been reduced from 9.0 mm to 5.0 mm; the 50 percent expansion limit has been removed; and an additional test option allowing for the use of a sieve test gauge for testing multiple water beads has been added. Corresponding changes have been made to the test method to reflect these changes. • In section 1250.4(c)(2), the extractable acrylamide limit has been changed from 65 μg to 325 μg per 100 small water beads or per 1 large water bead. • In section 1250.4(c)(2), the proposed definitions for small and large water beads describing acrylamide testing, have been changed from “across the smallest diameter” to “in all dimensions” for small water beads, and from “across the smallest diameter” to “in any dimension” for large water beads in the final rule. • In section 1250.4(d), Figures 3 (“Warning for Water Bead ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Preview showing 10k of 260k characters. Full document text is stored and available for version comparison. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━