The use of inorganic pigments in plastics for toys is currently controlled in the EU by the standard EN 71 part 3 (1995), as amended. This standard may have be revised now that the updated toy safety Directive has been published (see below).

New Directive

The original EU Directive covering toy safety (1988/378/EEC) has recently been updated - driven at least partly by the evidence of poor control by American companies of their products manufactured in China. The new Directive is 2009/48/EC and a copy can be downloaded by clicking here (37 pages, approx. 1MB).

Application

The polymer used for the toy must not be one of those restricted under the former Directive 91/338/EEC (now replaced by a word-identical entry in Annex XVII of REACH) - please see the information sheet covering this by clicking here.

As regards chemicals, the new Directive bans the use of substances in toys which are classified as "CMR" in the REACH-sense. This covers the use of carcinogens (categories 1 and 2), mutagens (category 1 and 2) or

PLEASE NOTE THAT THE COMMENTS BELOW ARE BASED ON THE VERSION OF EN 71 CURRENT AT THE TIME OF WRITING (OCTOBER 2009)

EN 71 refers specifically to tests carried out on finished toys as the only way to demonstrate compliance with the EU "Toys Directive". This is necessary as the test involves leaching the pigmented plastic with dilute acid : the use of excessive temperatures or processing aids incompatible with the polymer could lead to degradation giving rise to higher extraction levels.

Pigment customers often need to know if JMB cadmium pigments are suitable for use in toys therefore, as a guide, we have carried out a series of extraction tests using various polymers and our full-strength yellow 201 at 1% loading and full-strength red 210 at 0.5%. The extraction result ranges for all the polymers tested (8 tests in each of five polymers) are shown in the table below :-

All these results are in mg Cd / kg of pigmented polymer

The results should be compared with the limits for extractable metals from toys quoted in table 1 of EN 71 part 3 :-

cadmium selenium

75 500

mg / kg mg / kg

The elements antimony, chromium, lead and mercury are invariably present at very low levels in the raw materials used by JMB : they will therefore be present at these very low levels in the finished pigment and will be well below the EN 71 extraction limits in the final pigmented polymer.

Please note that this information refers only to the use of JMB cadmium pigments in plastics for toys. Further information is available from our technical service department.

Please also note that, although we give this information in the belief that it is complete and accurate, final responsibility for complying with all legal requirements always remains with the end-user.