2024-10-01 09:18:50
Soft toys, dolls, drawing tablets, trucks, spinning tops, light board games, etc. : Some children’s toys contain LEDs. These emit blue light which can have various toxic effects on the retina and disrupt biological rhythms, including sleep, if exposed in the evening and at night. Children, whose eyes do not completely filter blue light, are particularly sensitive to these risks.
In order to guarantee the safety and health of users, European Directive 2009/48/EC on toys sets essential requirements for their placing on the market. For luminous toys, an annex of the standard on electric toys (NF EN IEC 62115) proposes a verification protocol supposed to guarantee the protection of children’s eyes. It aims to demonstrate compliance in all circumstances with the exposure limit values established at the international level.
The 2020 version of the standard is not sufficiently protective
A new version of the standard, revised in 2020, came into force in 2022. The verification protocol included in this revision makes it possible in particular to verify eye safety requirements by calculations based on technical characteristics of lamps and usage scenarios. This protocol replaces the previous one, based on tests and measurements.
At the request of the ministries responsible for health and the economy and finance, ANSES conducted a in-depth expertise of this new protocol. This analysis concludes that the scientific study on which the protocol is based contains several errors. These can drive toys declared to comply with exceed exposure limit valuesdefined to prevent the risks associated with blue light. These errors relate to the relevance of exposure scenarios, the calculation of luminance and the conversion of energy flows into intensity.
During the assessment, tests were also carried out on a sample of 19 LEDs contained in toys available on the market. These tests confirmed that the 2020 version of the standard is less protective than the previous one, from 2005: eight of the toys tested could not have been placed on the market with the 2005 version of the standard, due to the exceeding of safety requirements, compared to only one with that of 2020. Compliance with the new version of the standard therefore does not guarantee eye safety requirements to prevent any risk to children’s eyes.
ANSES recommends quickly initiating a review of the normative framework
Given the health issues associated with the exposure of children to excessively high levels of blue light and the importance of the standard to guarantee the safety of toys sold, ANSES recommends quickly initiating a review of the “eye safety” section of the 2020 version of standard NF EN 62115. To support this revision, and in agreement with the commissioning ministries, ANSES is engaged in a sharing its scientific analysis at European level. Pending this review, it recommends the suspension of this part of the standard and to temporarily return to the 2005 version to check the eye safety of toys.
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