Children's furniture, farewell to adult standards

China's first national standards for children 3-14 years old use furniture introduction of the "Children's furniture general technical conditions" will be implemented on August 1, before that, about the children's health and safety of children's furniture has been in use the standard adult furniture.

After there are laws to follow and evidence to check, are children's furniture that has frequent quality problems safe and credible, so you don't need to say "baby sorry" after the injury is caused?

The price of children's furniture is high quality and low, lacking special quality standards

Before the introduction of "General Technical Conditions for Children's Furniture", children's furniture products that used "flowers of the motherland" as the object of use have always used the standard of adult furniture, and are "wild children" with no rules and no department management.

Children's resistance and self-protection are weak, and the safety requirements for furniture are much higher than those of adults. For example, it is generally believed that the key to whether furniture is environmentally friendly lies in the content of formaldehyde. In fact, if harmful substances such as lead, mercury, benzene, and xylene are present in the furniture, it will also cause great harm to the brain and kidney development of young children. Even the common action of children sucking fingers after touching furniture with their hands, it is easy for children to accidentally ingest a large amount of heavy metals, and the absorption rate of heavy metals by children is about 5 times that of adults. In Europe, the testing standards for children ’s furniture are implemented in accordance with the standards for children ’s toys, while domestic standards refer to the standards for adult furniture. Manufacturers use them as a reduced version of adult furniture. Some manufacturers even use them for profit. Inferior or harmful materials. Experts said that children's furniture produced according to the standards of adult furniture may not be suitable for children in terms of safety performance and control of toxic and hazardous substances, because adults and children have different tolerances, and they have no effect on the adult body. .

In recent years, children's furniture has repeatedly exposed quality problems, especially safety issues. At the beginning of 2009, a "formaldehyde door for children's furniture" incident occurred in Shenzhen; at the end of 2009, IKEA recalled Lepa children's highchairs continuously, which was the fifth recall of its children's products since April 2008. According to incomplete statistics, in the first half of last year alone, there were more than 20 children's furniture manufacturers exposed by the quality supervision department in China. The results of a random inspection of children's furniture released by the Guangdong Quality Supervision Bureau recently showed that the passing rate of 62 batches of children's furniture is only 67.7%. There are two batches of children's furniture that exceed the heavy metal standard, and three batches of children's furniture exceed the standard of formaldehyde emissions The measured value of soluble lead in children's bedside table exceeded the standard by nearly 40 times.

Relative to this quality, the price of children's furniture has been high. The reporter visited and found that the children's furniture market is mixed, even in the large furniture market, there are not many well-known children's furniture brands. In the small and medium-sized stores, there are many children's furniture products with low brand awareness, rough quality, pungent odor, and sharp corners. But regardless of the brand's popularity, as long as it is children's furniture, its price is often higher than that of adult furniture. For example, a common set of children's double-door bookcases made of solid wood granules costs 2895 yuan, and a 1.2-meter-wide particle board single bed costs 2500 yuan, which exceeds the price of the same type of 1.5-meter-wide double bed. The price of imported children's furniture is ridiculously high.

The reason for this strange phenomenon is that the price is high and the quality is low. First, most manufacturers focus on product styles and colors. They only want to attract consumers' attention in the first place, but they do not pay attention to product quality and safety performance. The second is that consumers as parents are not only easily attracted by styles, but also willing to spend high for their children.

The new standards are detailed and require stricter than adult furniture

According to Zhang Shuyan, one of the main drafters of "Conditions", "Conditions" made detailed provisions in many aspects.

First of all, in terms of structural safety, from large to stable or folding brackets, to small holes and gaps, there are scientific and detailed regulations. For example, it is required that children's furniture products should not have dangerous sharp edges and tips, edges and edges should be rounded or chamfered, etc .; the holes and gaps should be within a range of less than 6 mm or greater than or equal to 12 mm to avoid pinching Injury of children's hands or other parts of the body; To avoid the risk of suffocation caused by enclosed furniture to children, the standard specifies the size of the continuous space of the enclosed cabinet, to ensure that an enclosed space can accommodate a child to enter, with a certain ventilation function; It is stipulated that the close button cannot be equipped with an automatic lock setting; except for the area above the ground or the height of the child's standing surface above 1600 mm, the product cannot use glass parts; at the same time, the ropes used in the furniture, the casters of the swivel chair and the pneumatic rod are all detailed Regulations.

"Conditions" highlights the environmental protection of children's furniture. For children's furniture artificial board, paint, textiles, leather fabrics and other main and auxiliary materials such as heavy metals, formaldehyde emissions and decomposable aromatic amines and other 10 toxic and hazardous substances, it has set stricter limits than adult furniture. Industry standards are basically the same.

On the warning signs of children's furniture, "conditions" require specific items to be warned to avoid unnecessary harm to children. For example, for furniture with folding or adjustment devices, the warning message "Warning! Be careful to clamp" should be marked at the appropriate position of the product; if it is a swivel chair with a lifting pneumatic rod, it should be marked "dangerous!" At the appropriate position of the product! "Play" warning. And clearly stipulate that the safety warning fonts such as "danger", "warning" and "attention" in the warning language should not be less than No. 4 boldface, and the warning content should not be less than No.5 boldface.

Focus on implementation, consumers are most afraid of the standard into a blank paper

The new standard is coming soon, consumers understand geometry?

The reporter saw in a large furniture mall near Central that there are about four or five brands of children's furniture in the store. Consumer Ms. Sun is buying a children's bed for her 5-year-old son. She told reporters that when choosing a children's bed, she would pay attention to the existence of toxic and hazardous substances, sharp edges and other details. But when the reporter asked if she knew about the introduction of national standards for children's furniture, Ms. Sun said she did not know. The reporter also randomly interviewed several consumers who are buying furniture for their children. Most of them said that they did not know that new standards were introduced, let alone understand the specific content, but they all felt that it is a good thing for children's furniture to have specific national standards. Consumer Mr. Li said happily, "Then I will wait for the standard to be implemented before buying a child's combo bed for my daughter."

However, while most parents expressed their support, they also had doubts and worries.

Some time ago, Mr. Zhang just bought a children ’s bed for his naughty son. He regretted that he had bought it early, and worried that the bed he bought would not meet the requirements of the new standard and there were hidden safety risks.

Ms. Wang expressed concern about whether the new standard can be strictly implemented: With the standard, does the furniture manufacturer really strictly follow the standard?

Ms. Zhao also holds the same view. In her view, the implementation of the standard is more important than the introduction of the standard, and the standard cannot be a dead letter.

Some manufacturers knew in advance that new standards for children's furniture would come out, and worried that the existing products would not be up to standard and would be eliminated. They had already used the names such as "June 1" Children's Day to vigorously promote and digest stock products. A sales manager of a certain manufacturer said frankly, “We will promote before the standard is introduced and try to ship as much as possible, hoping to reduce the loss”. He said that "Conditions" strengthened the environmental protection and practicality of children's furniture making materials, making the production cost higher. They hoped to apply this standard to arrange the next production before the implementation of "Conditions". By using better Raw materials to improve the environmental protection level of products.

However, more companies are watching. An industry source told reporters that there are currently two types of domestic quality testing. One is the factory certificate, which is the internal quality supervision of the enterprise, which is not authoritative; the other is the quality inspection report, but the report is only for the batch of products being inspected, and cannot cover all batches of products. Most of the inspections are submitted by enterprises, or quality inspections by relevant departments. After the official implementation of the "conditions", the relevant departments will be implemented in what manner and with what strength. At present, there is no more information. If they continue to adopt the current quality supervision methods, these companies may think that they can escape the "luck". Conditions ".

Faced with the new standards, how will large furniture stores respond? The reporter called a large furniture store and asked whether the children's furniture brand in the venue would be re-examined according to the new standard. The other party replied that the operation department was busy with daily work and could not give a reply at present. The reporter asked some sales staff in the shopping mall, most of them said that they did not know that there will be a new standard, but after carefully asking the details of the "conditions", if the standard is strictly implemented, many children's furniture products on the market are not Meet the standard.

Liu Yaoguo, secretary general of the National Furniture Standardization Technical Committee, one of the drafters of children's furniture standards, said that "Conditions" are national mandatory standards. Once implemented, the quality of children's furniture produced or sold (including imported) in China must be implemented and Those who meet the requirements of this standard will be ordered to be delisted. Zhu Changling, deputy director of the China Furniture Association, said that furniture products must pass the quality inspection of the State Technical Supervision Bureau, and the "quality inspection report" must be attached to the instruction manual.

link

Choose children's furniture, consider more details

Children's furniture is very different from the home used by adults in some details.

Children with rounded corners are active. It is common to run around in the room. If you accidentally hit the table corner, if the table corner is sharp, it is particularly easy to cause injury. The rounded corner design can reduce the degree of collision damage. If the parents are not at ease, they can also purchase a kind of transparent colloidal rounded corners, which are attached to the corners of the desk, etc., and need to be checked regularly for looseness.

Damping is widely used in wardrobes and drawer doors. The damping can allow the cabinet door to rebound slowly, allowing children to have time to pull their hands back, and will not pinch their fingers due to excessive force when closing the cabinet.

Plastic edges replace aluminum edges. Many children's furniture will be decorated with shiny aluminum edges. The metal edges are mostly sharp. The children's skin is delicate and may be scratched when touched. Children's furniture with plastic edges instead of aluminum edges should be selected. The screws may also have sharp metal edges, which need to be covered with special hardware fasteners.

Choose furniture with low adhesive consumption. The environmental protection level of furniture materials from low to high are MDF, particle board, large core board, plywood, laminate, integrated wood and solid wood.

Avoid choosing furniture with too bright colors because most bright oil paints contain heavy metals such as lead. Tests have shown that among the 23 samples of lead paint, orange paint has the highest lead content, and the rest are yellow, green, and brown. At 1 meter from the ground, the lead concentration in the air is 16 times that at 1.5 meters, and the height of children is just within this range.