The US Consumer Product Safety Commission's revised "Requirements for Phthalates in Toys and Child Care Products" will go into effect on 25 April. The revision focuses on the scope and requirements for plasticizers (phthalates) under 16 CFR 1307 of the Federal Act. After the amendment, the mandatory permanent ban on plasticizers in children's toys and child care products will be increased from the existing three to eight, and if the content of plasticizers in products exceeds 1000mg/kg, they will be prohibited from being sold in the US market. This new regulation has had a great impact on China's plastic toy export industry.
The US plasticizer ban has been introduced and related plastic enterprises have been affected.
Bans in various countries
As early as 2005, the European Union issued a ban on phthalates (2005/84/EC), for supplies used for children under the age of 3 and able to be placed in their mouths, the content of six phthalate plasticisers in their plastic parts cannot exceed 0.1%. Warnings are required on packaging containing toys containing soft PVC for use with children under 3 years of age and which can be placed in their mouths. In the US, the US Consumer Product Safety Improvement Act (CPSIA) was enacted and implemented in 2008, restricting the use of plasticisers in children's consumer products. Canada, Japan, Brazil and Argentina have also made regulations on plasticisers in children's products respectively, requiring that the plasticiser content should not exceed 0.1%.
China also enforced plasticiser standards for children's toys in January 2016. As China is referring to the EU's standards, the restrictions are mainly on six common plasticisers. The U.S. ban on several new plasticizers, domestic standards and the EU did not set limits, the U.S. revised the implementation of the ban on plasticizers, will have a greater impact on China's plastic toy export industry.
Export restrictions
In recent years, plasticizers have become an important factor in restricting the export of plastic toys in China. According to relevant department statistics, in 2017, because the product plasticizer exceeds the standard, China's exports to the EU children's toys were notified 166 times, only in the first quarter of 2018 China's related products were notified by the EU as many as 77 times.
It is understood that children's products and toys need to use soft plastics, and plasticizers have excellent effects on plastic softening, coupled with the low cost of plasticizers with phthalates as the main component, so plasticizers are quite popular with plastic enterprises. In addition, plasticizers are widely used in a variety of plastics, its high testing requirements, costs, the ability of enterprises to self-test is not strong, in the injection molding process, once the plasticizer content is too high, the product will not pass, the enterprise will suffer losses.
How to respond
Countries have formulated and implemented bans on plasticizers, and the relevant enterprises in the plastics industry should pay great attention to them. Firstly, the enterprises concerned should pay great attention to the decrees promulgated by various countries, interpret them in detail, and incorporate the response to technical barriers into the enterprise quality control system to improve the enterprises' ability to prevent risks. Secondly, they should improve the testing standards of the export money of their products to ensure that the export products meet the relevant standards and legal requirements of the exporting countries. Then, relevant enterprises should take safety and environmental protection as the entry point, establish a sound raw material management system, strengthen the process technology management in the production chain, prevent risks from the source of production and improve the quality and safety level. At the same time, enterprises should also actively seek alternatives to plasticisers, and find plasticisers that meet technical regulations as soon as possible through a combination of "industry, academia and research".
