- The Consumer Council (CC) supports the Commerce and Economic Development Bureau to implement up-to-date safety standards to keep up with the latest international safety standards for various children’s products, such that the local safety requirements will not only be in line with international standards adopted in major economies, but also better safeguard consumer rights on safe products.
- Physical and mechanical safety of children’s products is exceptionally important. However, in the tests conducted by CC on diverse children’s products over the years have revealed various safety concerns in individual products. An example is a recent test on high chairs, published in March 2017 issue of the CHOICE Magazine, revealing that 2 out of 13 tested models failed to meet the referenced Safety Standards and posed risks to young children being injured due to pinching their fingers between the gaps.
- Furthermore, in other tests CC conducted on wheeled child conveyances, published in April 2020 and May 2022 issues of the CHOICE Magazine respectively, handles of some models were damaged under durability test, and the harness strap of 1 model fell short in the pull test, being unable to comply with the referenced Safety Standards.
- The above are valid examples to demonstrate the significance of stringent safety requirements. In light of this, CC is pleased to acknowledge that the proposed updates of the safety standards are applicable to children’s products including bunk beds, child-safety barriers, high chairs and multi-purpose high chairs for domestic use, and wheeled child conveyances, especially the updated ASTM Standards has tightened the stability requirements on high chairs, and extended the requirements on additional parking brake to wheeled conveyances.
- With reference to the information from the US Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC), most incidents related to high chairs were falls when children attempted to climb over or into high chairs, and tip-overs when children leaned backwards or rocked back and forth while seated. In addition, CPSC also identified children’s injuries associated with the use of wheeled child conveyances that possess poor stability, ineffective brakes, etc.
- On this account, CC believes implementing stringent stability requirements on high chairs and improving the parking brake mechanism of wheeled conveyances are right initiatives to reduce children’s accidents and to enhance consumer protection on children’s product safety.
- Accordingly, CC fully supports the proposed changes on the Safety Standards for Children’s Products to improve the physical and mechanical safety of these products.
December 2022
Consumer Council
