CEN Issues EN 14350:2020 ‘Drinking Equipment for Young Children’

In June 2020, the European Committee for Standardization (Comité Européen de Normalisation, CEN) published EN 14350:2020 ‘Childcare articles – Drinking Equipment – Safety requirements and test methods’. This standard specifies safety requirements relating to the materials, construction, performance, packaging and product information for drinking equipment intended for children 0 to 48 months of age.

EN 14350:2020 supersedes the following two standards on drinking equipment for young children:

• EN 14350-1:2004 ‘Child use and care articles – Drinking equipment – Part 1: General and mechanical requirements and tests’
• EN 14350-2:2004 ‘Child use and care articles – Drinking equipment – Part 2: Chemical requirements and tests’

These two standards have been combined into EN 14350:2020 to give a completely renewed standard with a new structure. This new standard contains, inter alia, several important major changes:

1. Clause 3 ‘Terms and Definitions’ – restructured with revision of existing terminologies and addition of new entries
2. Clause 4 ‘Description’ – expands pictorial representations of different pieces of drinking equipment and their design features by including a push-pull valve, protective covers, handles, a clip and loops
3. Clause 5 ‘Test equipment and tolerances’ – completely new section describing the test equipment to be used
4. Clause 6 ‘Construction and mechanical properties – General and sample preparation’ – sample preparation and conditioning have been revised
5. Clause 7 ‘Construction and mechanical requirements and tests’ – expanded and restructured to improve the order of testing. New requirements for decoration, inscription and decals have been introduced, and the test method has been modified
6. Clause 8 ‘Chemical requirements and test methods’ – expanded and restructured but substances covered by other pieces of harmonized legislation are excluded, including:
   • Phthalates falling under entries 51 and 52 to Annex XVII of Regulation (EC) 1907/2006 ‘Registration, Evaluation, Authorization and Restriction of Chemicals (REACH)
   • Food contact substances (e.g. bisphenol A (BPA)) in Regulation (EU) 10/2011 ‘Food Contact Plastics’
7. Annex A ‘Warnings’ – completely new normative annex with translation of warnings in 24 languages
8. Annex B ‘Rationales’ – completely new informative annex providing explanations for the inclusion of some of the requirements in the standard
9. Annex C ‘Method for the determination of 2-mercaptobenzothiazole (MBT) and antioxidants specified in Table 7’ – informative annex has been revised and in more detail
10. Annex E ‘Good practice for visibility and legibility’ – completely new informative annex for warnings, product and purchase information as well as instructions for use

According to EN 14350:2020, this standard will be given the status of a national standard by December 2020 and conflicting national standards are to be withdrawn by June 2021 at the very latest. This standard is expected to be harmonized under Directive 2001/95/EC, the so-called General Product Safety Directive (GPSD), upon official acceptance by the European Commission (EC) and by publication in the Official Journal of the European Union (OJEU).

Highlights of migration limits for elements in drinking equipment between EN 14350:2020 and EN 14350-2:2004 are summarized in Table 1. It is interesting to note that the new standard has migration limits for 19 soluble elements, including two types of chromium.

Table 1

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