Export Compliance in Green Printing: Key US and EU Product Safety and Hazardous Substance Standards

Health awareness keeps rising, making green and eco-friendly operations an unavoidable direction for the printing sector. Western developed countries have introduced environmental requirements across a range of categories. The excerpts below are compiled for printing companies' reference.

When heavy metals and phthalates accumulate in human organs over the long term, they can damage health and have a particularly serious impact on children's growth. Consumers first look at product safety, especially whether harmful substances are present; safety requirements are even stricter for children's products. As a result, printing companies must manage product safety whether they export or not, ensuring harmful substances are absent or far below accepted limits. The main foreign standards related to the printing industry are summarized below.

US Toy Safety Standard

ASTM F963-11 was created by the American Society for Testing and Materials. The revised US Toy Safety Standard was approved in December 2008 and officially published in February 2009. It is mandatory for toys for children under 14. Products in this scope must pass three categories of tests.

First, mechanical and physical performance testing looks at toy safety in mechanical and physical terms, focusing on small parts, sharp points, sharp edges, protrusions and magnets to prevent child injury. Main requirements: toys for children under 36 months must not produce small parts before or after abuse testing; toys for children under 8 must not contain accessible sharp points before or after abuse testing; toys for children under 8 must not have accessible sharp edges or protrusions that could stab a child; dangerous magnet parts with a magnetic flux index above 50 face specific requirements to prevent children under 14 from swallowing small magnets.

Second, flammability testing assesses flame-retardant performance. Materials other than textiles, with paper excluded, should be non-flammable. Packaging materials that consumers may discard, and packaging items that may become part of a toy's play function, must also meet this requirement.

Third, toxicity testing covers eight heavy metals. The migration of soluble antimony, arsenic, barium, cadmium, chromium, lead, mercury and selenium from surface coatings and substrates must not exceed the specified upper limits, consistent with China's National Toy Safety Technical Code. Total lead content must be controlled at no more than 100 ppm in substrates and no more than 90 ppm in surface coatings.

US Consumer Product Safety Improvement Act

Issued in August 2008, the Consumer Product Safety Improvement Act (CPSIA) became the strictest consumer protection law since the US Consumer Product Safety Commission was established in 1972. On August 12, 2011, the US President signed CPSIA amendment HR2715 to revise the existing toy act. CPSIA affects every US industry involved in manufacturing, importing and distributing toys, clothing and other children's products and childcare articles.

The act requires children's products, toys and childcare articles for children under 12 to meet applicable total lead limits, phthalate limits and more. Specific rules: total lead content must be controlled at no more than 100 ppm in substrates and no more than 90 ppm in surface coatings; six phthalates must be below 0.1%; ASTM F963-11 becomes a mandatory toy safety standard.

Products also need traceable labels and supplier conformity declarations. Traceable labeling provides an easily identifiable mark on the product or packaging, while a supplier conformity declaration requires support from relevant test reports or supplier assurance letters.

EU Toy Safety Standard

The EU Toy Safety Standard is abbreviated as EN71 (2009/48/EC). It is the EU directive directly governing toy safety, setting toy safety quality requirements and conformity assessment procedures. All toys entering the EU market must first meet this directive. EN71 consists of 11 parts, with mandatory testing covering up to Part Three: mechanical and physical properties, flammability, and migration of certain elements.

Mechanical and physical requirements include the following. For small parts, toys for children under 3 must not contain or produce small parts before or after normal use and abuse testing; toys not suitable for children under 3 but potentially hazardous to them must carry warnings. For sharp edges, toys must not produce accessible hazardous sharp edges before or after abuse testing; toys that need potentially hazardous edges for function must carry warnings, but only for children aged 3 and above. For sharp points, accessible points during normal use must not be dangerous sharp points; toys must not produce accessible hazardous sharp points after abuse testing; toys that need potentially hazardous sharp points for function must carry warnings, but only for children aged 3 and above.

EU REACH Regulation

REACH stands for Registration, Evaluation, Authorisation and Restriction of Chemicals. It is an EU chemical management regulation that applies preventive management to all chemicals entering the EU market, similar to registration, authorization and licensing systems for special products.

The regulation was officially published by the EU on December 30, 2006, and took effect on June 1, 2007. It consolidates existing EU chemical legislation and adds more obligations for manufacturers, distributors and end users. All products imported into the EU must comply with REACH. If a substance is intentionally released from an article under normal use conditions and annual import volume exceeds 1 tonne, that substance must be registered under the regulation.

REACH also defines and publishes substances of very high concern (SVHCs). Substances listed as SVHCs require notification. On October 28, 2008, the European Chemicals Agency published the first SVHC candidate list. As of June 20, 2013, the candidate list had been updated nine times. The officially published candidate list now contains 144 SVHCs, covering many inorganic and organic substances used across industries.

REACH information transfer requirements differ by substance risk. To ensure chemical materials supplied to factories comply with REACH, suppliers need to provide lists of related product materials such as paper, ink and glue; substance composition tables; SVHC information; and REACH conformity assessment reports.

Regulations for Electrical and Electronic Equipment

The EU RoHS Directive, which restricts certain hazardous substances in electrical and electronic equipment, was issued in version 1.0 on July 1, 2006. It restricts six hazardous substances in newly placed electrical and electronic equipment: lead, mercury, cadmium, hexavalent chromium, polybrominated biphenyls (PBBs) and polybrominated diphenyl ethers (PBDEs). On July 1, 2011, version 2.0 was issued, adding technical documentation, conformity marking and self-declaration.

The printing industry does not itself make these electrical and electronic products. However, if related accessories are included and sold with paper products in the European market, those accessories must comply with the directive.

In intense green competition, testing that only meets individual legal requirements can no longer keep up with rapidly emerging environmental directives and buyer environmental requirements. How to identify national harmful substance control directives in a timely, effective and systematic way, and how to systematically manage customer requirements for harmful substances, has become an issue that must be solved.

Introducing QC080000 has therefore become a systematic solution to this issue.

QC080000 is the Requirements for Hazardous Substance Process Management of Electrical and Electronic Components and Products. It is the common name for the hazardous substance process management (HSPM) certification program developed by the electrotechnical committee. It was published in March 2005 and revised in 2012. The standard and its requirements aim to ensure products and production processes are free of prohibited hazardous substances through effective integrated management control. It is currently a hazardous substance management standard that can improve a company's harmful substance control capability and lower operational risk.

— This article is reposted from China Packaging Network (pack.cn), original link: http://news.pack.cn/show-361846.html