The Swedish Chemicals Agency (Kemi) has published details of children’s toys containing illegal quantities of phthalates, following tests carried out on 28 products.

The agency found two children’s dummies products containing levels of di(2-ethylhexyl) phthalate (DEHP) between 17% to 19%, far exceeding the permitted concentration of 0.1%. In addition, a Halloween mask was found to contain concentrations of both di-isononyl phthalate (DINP) and DEHP above allowed levels. Kemi has notified the product manufacturers of the results, and the non-compliant toys are banned from the market.

Source: Chemical Watch and KEMI

Two-thirds of the Croatian people have voted for the country’s accession to the European Union in yesterday’s referendum. The referendum was held after the president and parliament previously decided to join the EU. The referendum was the last step in the accession of the Mediterranean country, a process that started after it became a candidate country in 2004. When Croatia will join the European Union on July 1, 2013 it will be its 28th Member State.

I hold warm memories of my time working in Zagreb to assist the government in Zagreb preparing the Act on Technical Requirements for Products and on Conformity Assessment, the Act on Metrology, as well as several technical regulations (on machinery safety, low voltage, EMC, non-automatic weighing instruments etc). I congratulate my old colleagues like Snjezana Zima, Mirko Vukovic, Tamara Obradovic and all those others persons who worked so hard to transpose the European New Approach Directives and prepared changes to the Croatian quality infrastructure. I still admire their professionalism, patience and perseverance. It’s due to people like them that we now can celebrate Croatia’s accession to the European Union. Hvala!

On January 4, the European Commission published an updated list of the European harmonized standards that pertain to the Recreational Craft Directive (94/25/EC). The standards on this list may be used by manufacturers to prove that their boats or engines complies with the essential requirements of this directive.

Important to note is that there are two new harmonized standards on the list:

• EN ISO 6185-4:2011
  Inflatable boats — Part 4: Boats with a hull length of between 8 m and 24 m with a motor power rating of 15 kW and greater (ISO 6185-4:2011)
• EN ISO 11591:2011
  Small craft, engine-driven — Field of vision from helm position (ISO 11591:2011)

These two standards can now be used by manufactures for which they are relevant to prove compliance with the relevant essential requirements of the Recreational Craft Directive (94/25/EC).

This updated list is important to all manufacturers of CE marked pressure equipment that have used European harmonized standards to prove CE compliance. If you have applied standards to prove compliance with the aforementioned directive, we recommend you to check the new list of standards to see if any of the standard you applied have been updated, or whether there are new standards available for your products. When standards have been updated by this list, you need to re-evaluate your products against the updated standard and update your Declaration of Conformity.

The updated list of standards can be found in our Library shortly.

A Rotherham firm has been prosecuted for safety failings after a maintenance engineer was crushed by a 1.5 tonne weight landing on his back.

The worker suffered a broken shoulder, two cracked ribs and the tops of three vertebrae were snapped off when he was trapped between the counterweight of a large zinc galvanizing machine and a junction box.

The counterweight and tub that lowers the metal into the zinc
The incident, on 27 September 2010 at Yorkshire Spin Galvanising Ltd in Cornish Way, Rotherham, prompted an investigation by the Health and Safety Executive (HSE).

Rotherham Magistrates’ Court was told that the worker went to investigate a fault and climbed onto a gantry inside the machine. When the fault cleared he went to the rear of the gantry, out of sight of the operator, to check another repair he had recently made. The machine was still running and as he leaned over a guardrail to get a good view, the counterweight descended – pinning him against the junction box.

He managed to shout ‘stop’ to alert his colleagues before losing consciousness and a co-worker at the control panel was able to lift the weight up to free him.

HSE Inspector Denise Fotheringham said after the hearing:

“This could easily have been a fatal incident considering the weight of this part.

“In this case, the company’s procedures fell well below those we would normally expect. The machine is very large and maintenance workers routinely entered to fault-find. There were also blind spots where an engineer would be out of sight of the operator.

“There were no systems to isolate the machinery and engineers relied on emergency stops and interlocks. That’s woefully inadequate as there is a risk the machine could be re-started with the engineer inside.

“Machines should always be fully isolated from the power supply and if an engineer has to go in, it needs to be locked off with a padlock that only the engineer can undo once the work is complete.”

Yorkshire Spin Galvanising Ltd, registered at East Parade, Leeds, pleaded guilty to breaching Section 2(1) of the Health & Safety at Work etc Act 1974 at their Rotherham plant. The company was fined £10,000 and ordered to pay £5,000 costs.

Latest statistics from HSE reveal there were 27 people killed in the manufacturing sector during 2010/11 and just over 3,800 major injuries were reported.

Many visitors of our website have expressed their appreciation about ‘the Water Cooler’, the platform that offers the possibility to ask questions or leave comments and suggestions. At CEMarking.Net we love to hear from our visitors, members and clients.

Therefore, we are excited to upgrade the Water Cooler into a full featured forum. We hope that you’ll continue to take part in the discussion in this forum.
We not only created the Water Cooler forum for the general questions and chit chat, but also a number of specific forums for specific groups of users:

• the Machinery CE Compliance Group
• Electrical Equipment CE Compliance Group
• Medical Devices CE Compliance Group
• Toys CE Compliance Group

Other groups will soon follow, and if you have suggestions, we’ll be delighted to hear your suggestions.

And the best we kept for last: participation in the groups and the forums is completely free! So take advantage of the opportunity to share your knowledge and to ask your questions.

To join a group and the contribute in the forums, click the “Join”-link in the top navigation bar. If you already have a login account for our website, you can proceed to the login page. Just click the “Login”-link. Once logged in to the website, go to the forums and groups of your interest and click the “Join Group”-button.

Welcome to the CE marking community!

And may all your dreams come true…

We are looking forward to working with you in 2012. We’ll continue doing our best to demystify CE marking and publishing great tools to make CE certification and conformity assessment easier.

The CEMarking.Net Team

Christopher Massey, a former Barrow Raiders rugby player, died after being struck by a piece of machinery while working on a night shift at the Kimberly-Clark plant on Park Road on 8 November 2007.

The company was prosecuted by the Health and Safety Executive (HSE) after an investigation found a dangerous part of a machine, used to produce rolls of Andrex toilet paper, had been left unguarded.

Preston Crown Court heard the 28-year-old had been looking through a gap in the machine to make sure the tissue was being fed through correctly.

As he checked inside the machine at around 5.10am, it began to move a large, two-metre wide reel of tissue into place, striking him on the head. His body was discovered around twenty minutes later by colleagues shortly before the end of their shift.

The HSE investigation found the machine had been modified four months earlier so that reels of two-ply as well as single-ply toilet paper could be fed through it.

The part of the machine used to hold the large reels of tissue had been moved back so that another piece of machinery could be added to handle the two-ply toilet paper. This created a potentially dangerous gap which Mr Massey and other workers had used to check the tissue was being fed through correctly.

The court was told the factory had been short-staffed on the night of Mr Massey’s death, with two of the four workers in the team off sick. He was moved to work on the part of the machine that fed through the giant reels, despite not having had training on how to operate it since its modification.

The gap in the machine gave him the best vantage point to check the tissue, and none of the workers had been told it was not safe to stand in that position. Following his death the company fitted two sheets of clear plastic over the gap which allowed employees to check the machine without being put at risk.

Kimberly-Clark Ltd pleaded guilty to a breach of the Health and Safety at Work etc Act 1974 by failing to ensure the safety of its employees. The company, of Tower View, Kings Hill, West Malling, Kent, was ordered to pay £20,000 in prosecution costs in addition to the fine of £180,000 on 14 December 2011.

Speaking after the hearing, HSE Principal Inspector Mark Dawson said:

Significant modifications were made to this machinery which resulted in the creation of a dangerous trap point. Kimberly-Clark failed to notice this and, as a result, a young man in his prime was killed.

None of the workers at the factory had received training on how to use the machine after it had been modified, or on how to safely check the tissue was being fed through correctly. This meant that, for several months after the modification, their lives were put at risk.

Tragically, Chris Massey lost his life when he looked inside the machine at the moment when it moved a new reel into place. If all of the dangerous parts on the machine had been properly guarded then his life could have been saved.”

Mr Massey was one of 29 workers to be killed while working in the manufacturing industry in Great Britain in 2007/8. More than 5,000 workers also suffered major injuries. Information on improving manufacturing safety is available at www.hse.gov.uk/manufacturing.

Safe and fun is the perfect combination, but it is actually not so obvious! What makes a toy safe to use will depend not only on the toy itself, but also on how it is used and the age of the child. What should you look for as a parent, to know if a toy is safe or not for your child?

To offer some good advice, European Commission Vice President Antonio Tajani is launching the European Toy Safety Campaign, intended to show how to get the safest toys, and how to use them safely. A video clip to be aired on TV stations around Europe explains the issues, reinforced by a card with safety tips to be handed out to consumers all over the EU when they are buying toys.

Vice-President Antonio Tajani stated:

“I am launching this effort at Christmas time, when most toys will be bought. This year, toys sold in the EU will be safer than ever, and my campaign will enable parents to make the right choices for their kids.” He added: “I am happy that media, and hundreds of stores all over the EU, will participate in this campaign. But safety is of course important all year round, so let’s now all make sure that we don’t learn safety “by accident”!

Safe and fun is the perfect combination, but it is actually not so obvious! What makes a toy safe to use will depend not only on the toy itself, but also on how it is used and the age of the child. What should you look for as a parent, to know if a toy is safe or not for your child?

The video clip:

The Toy Tips can be found here:
http://ec.europa.eu/enterprise/toys-tips

On November 18, the European Commission published an updated list of the European harmonized standards that pertain to the Machinery Directive (2006/42/EC). The standards on this list may be used by machinery manufacturers to prove that their machinery complies with the essential requirements of this directive.

This updated list is important to all manufacturers of CE marked machinery that have used European harmonized standards to prove CE compliance. If you have applied standards to prove compliance with the aforementioned directive, we recommend you to check the new list of standards to see if any of the standard you applied have been updated, or whether there are new standards available for your products. When standards have been updated by this list, you need to re-evaluate your products against the updated standard and update your Declaration of Conformity.

The updated list of standards can be found in our Library shortly.