EN71 Certificates
Throughout our product listings you will see references to EN71. For those of you who are making for personal use you can find assurance that all our products have met safety checks. These will, of a minimum, mean that the product has undergone chemical checks to ensure there is nothing harmful to babies in our products.
If you are making toys to sell you will need to pay attention to the information. It does not matter if you are only making for one event a year or selling every weekend and are prolifically selling online, if you are taking money for a product you MUST UKCA test your toys. Even ‘hobby’ businesses! If it looks like a toy/has play value it must be tested. No get outs, no adding ‘not for under 14s’ it needs the UKCA mark. This is a legal requirement.
So you’re making to sell?
Each of the components that go into your toy will need the chemical migration certificate for your technical file. Just knowing these products are safe is not enough – your trading standards officer/person doesn’t. You need the actual certificates. We provide the free certificate AFTER purchase.
Up until recently we have provided ALL of our certificates for free despite the testing bill costing us thousands of pounds. Unfortunately some people have abused this. Buying one bag of Kam Snap poppers, one reel of thread or a couple of metres of ribbon does in no way cover the costs of these tests so although a majority of certificates are free there are now a few that can be purchased. This will enable you to have the certificate but as a branded product you are welcome to buy elsewhere. You may even already have a certificate that covers these products and that’s also great news.
Each product will detail the type of certificate available for you to make an informed decision before you purchase it (Free, paid for or a Declaration of Conformity)
So the free certificates are:
All the plastic teethers (Sew in ones, corner teether ones and the ribbon attached) as well as the links. We have tested EVERY style and one of EVERY colour. We will also provide certificates for the wooden rings and rattle rings.
Almost all the fabrics (microfleece, cuddlesoft, embossed fleece, dimple fleece towelling, cotton waffle etc.) mirror material, crinkle, clear vinyl, glitter vinyl and safety eyes . Please remember if you purchase these products from another seller the certificate WILL NOT COVER the product as you cannot be sure they have come from the same manufacturer using the same chemical composition!
Paid for certificates.
The Berisford ribbons – we have had 4 different types of ribbon in the colours black yellow cyan and magenta.
Berties Bows 100% cotton lace in white.
Ric rac – tested two widths in green (previous certificate was in red)
Velcro® Brand
Coats Moon thread – tested in white
Kam Snap poppers - tested in white
Buttons – three types of buttons (pictured on the certificate) from the Fine Style brand
Chalk Fabric – Camelot brand.
We are selling the certificates for £7 each and you can purchase them through the website. The list of paid for certificates will increase as we expand our testing capability to encompass more and more brands of products.
Declaration Of Conformity
On occasion you may not get a full certificate. You may get a Declaration of Conformity. This is in place of the chemical migration certificate. It will confirm the testing date, and what tests were undertaken. This is given in place of the full certificate for your technical files. There are a couple of reasons for this – usually because it is NOT our certificate to give away. The manufacturer or supplier to us may have paid for the testing. This DoC will give you a paper trail – should trading standards come knocking you have done all you can and they will follow that trail to us.
In the case of our safety eyes we are giving a DoC for the reason the certificate is confusing. Its dated BEFORE the new chromium level test was entered to the standard therefore it appears that it is out of date when in fact we had it tested to the new standard. This is actually mentioned on the documents but unless you know what to look for it appears out of date. If you wish further clarification on this or would like the full certificate please get in touch.
The internal component certificates
We had taken the decision to test some of our internal products in the past. This was because we felt that although not needed legally, we wanted to be sure of the quality of the products. The foam cubes in particular was something we wanted tested because upholstery foam has lots of chemicals in that make it fire retardant. We wanted to be sure the type of foam we were using in the activity cubes are chemically safe for babies. The Poly Pellets are used in our i-spy bags and although these are recommended for children over three years these have been particularly popular for children and adults on the autistic spectrum. Some individuals on the spectrum like to chew so we wanted to be happy with the internal product too and had them tested!
As there was no obligation to test these products to start with, after getting all our other products retested we have made the decision that, for the time being, we will not be retesting these. You can still download the EN71 certificates as it can add to you file to show that you are taking a conscientious effort over the internal components – like those of you that use toy stuffing with the EN71 information on the front. It shows that you are taking as many reasonable steps to be as safe as you possible can.
If you need any further information on the above please fell free to get in touch either using the contact us form or by emails us at sales@tactiletreasures.co.uk
For more information on the UKCA testing process please see this page https://www.tactiletreasures.co.uk/about-us/ce-testing