What is this standard about?
By law, manufacturers must package certain household items – including some medicines, cleaning products and gardening goods – in child resistant packaging. This might be non-reclosable, such as blister packs; or reclosable, for example bleach or medicine bottles. This standard explains test methods for reclosable packaging.
Who is this standard for?
Anyone with an interest in child-resistant packaging or child accident prevention. This includes:
- Designers, makers and manufacturers of child-resistant packaging
- Test houses and regulators
- Supervisory and accreditation bodies
- Childcare facilities and schools (local authority and private)
- Consumers
Why should you use this standard?
It specifies performance requirements and test methods for reclosable packages designated as resistant to opening by children.
Acceptance criteria are given for the packages when tested by specified methods. These methods not only provide a measure of the effectiveness of the packaging in restricting access by children, but also cover the accessibility to the contents by adults.
NOTE: This standard applies to any reclosable packages for any product intended to be exposed or removed from the packaging in normal use. It confers type approval only and is not intended for quality assurance purposes.
What’s changed since the last update?
This revision supersedes the 2004 version of the standard which is withdrawn. In addition to a number of editorial revisions, the following technical revisions were made:
- Introduction was revised to remove historical discussion
- Definitions added for mechanical testing, mechanical test data, liner, essential characteristics and minor modifications
- Former Clauses 3 and 4 consolidated into new Clause 3 and subsequent clauses renumbered
- Requirements in previous edition that were not part of the testing have been relocated and are now informative. These are now included in the Introduction.
- The need to consider essential characteristics for a series of similar packaging is introduced- Instructions for evaluation of a series of similar packaging submitted at one time by separation under component type are clarified
- New sub-clause on additions to a series and minor modifications added
- Reference made to ISO 13127
- Charts for sequential testing corrected
- Need to disable all (or any) incorporated tamper evident features before testing added
- Use of torque meter for sample preparation of packages with torque dependent closures added
- The limit (35%) for the percentage of child tests administered by an individual tester is deleted
- The limit for the number of adults obtained from and tested at any one site (30) and number of adult tests administered by an individual tester (35) deleted