StandardsMark underpins children's product safety

摘要

It would probably come as a great shock for most parents to know that many of the products they trustfully purchase for use by babies and toddlers are not safety tested. It is likely that they would be further discomforted to know that, although for most products safety standards exist, they are not always mandatory. In a culture widely recognised as one of the most 'safety conscious' in the world, where wearing of seatbelts and helmets is compulsory, pools are generally fenced and speed limits are relatively slow, it is a small wonder that parents of young children should be surprised. "I think because our society takes such a strong safety stance on so many overt issues, there is a general misconception that if a person buys a product it is safety arid quality tested," said Mario Battaglia, the General Manager of Product Certification at SAI Global."This particularly applies to children's products. In most cases, these fall out of the ambit of the kind of rigorous mandatory standards and testing that many people would expect or even believe them to have undergone before sale."