Brazil was one of the first countries in the world to regulate the safety of toys. Thirty years ago, when the Brazilian market was experiencing the boom in imported products, the volume of accidents involving children and toys aroused the need to create parameters that would provide greater safety for children’s products.
This is how, in 1992, the National Institute of Metrology, Quality and Technology (Inmetro) published Ordinance No. 47, which established the technical requirements to be followed by national manufacturers and importers.
The objective was to regulate the Brazilian market, mitigate risks to children’s health and safety and, consequently, reduce the occurrence of consumer accidents involving toys, in addition to strengthening the national industry and ensuring fair competition.
At the time, the products came from all over the world, mainly from China, and entered Brazil at very low prices and without the slightest control over the impacts on the health and safety of consumers.
Today, 30 years later, the regulation has a new challenge: to become even more comprehensive, encompassing general requirements for children’s articles and not just for toys.
“Our great challenge is to create a regulation that is not rigid. In fact, this is the direction in Inmetro’s regulatory model. Some sectors, such as toys, are very agile in developing new technologies. Certain products enter the Brazilian market and do not qualify for certification because they are outside the regulation for having used a different process or technology”, highlighted the head of Inmetro’s Verification and Technical Studies Division (Divet), Hércules Souza.
The analyst responsible for Inmetro’s toy regulation, Luciane Lobo, recalled that the last update, made in 2021, made it clear that if the product has a play function and is intended for children up to 14 years of age, it must be compulsorily certified.
“Certain toys escape regulation because manufacturers claim to be therapeutic products, such as the recent pop its and hand spinner (anti-stress toys), which are marketed in various environments without proper certification,” he warned.
Safety
Today, three decades after the first standard, 90% of Brazilian manufacturers fully comply with Inmetro regulations, the other 10% comply with previous regulations. More than 300 million toys displayed the Inmetro seal last year, according to data from the Brazilian Association of Toy Manufacturers (Abrinq).
For Hércules Souza, data from Abrinq show that the regulation has achieved the objective of generating safer products for the consumer.
Analyst Luciane Lobo added that even micro and small companies that, according to her, have always been a concern of Inmetro, are managing to meet the requirements. “This shows that the sector understood the proposal and incorporated it into its internal processes,” she said.
For Aldeias Infantil SOS specialist Erika Tonelli, the role of Inmetro and the regulation are fundamental “so that we can continue to advance in the country in terms of the quality of toys, now with the great challenge of those sold illegally”.
The former national director of the NGO Criança Segura Alessandra Françoia said that, as one of the first countries in the world to regulate the safety of toys, Brazil is ahead in this regard.
“There is no doubt that we are ahead in terms of the quality of toys and the benefits achieved with the implementation of the standard and regulation. The great challenge for the next 30 years is to maintain it, improve it, monitor it through governments and generations of children,” he said.
Update
Over these 30 years, the toy regulation has undergone several updates, incorporating tests and requirements that support technological advancement, in line with international best practices. The central objective, however, remains: to improve the quality of the products and guarantee more safety to children from 0 to 14 years old, who are more susceptible to accidents, according to Inmetro.
In the assessment of the president of Abrinq, Synésio Batista, the regulation of toys in Brazil was a historic milestone and brought a lot of maturity to the sector.
“It was essential to protect the consumer, who had no information about health problems and contamination that could be triggered by unsafe products offered to children, and also to allow the development of national manufacturing”.
During this period, other safety aspects were included in the regulation, such as the revision of the age group classification; determination that products intended for children under 3 years of age made to be taken to the mouth (rattles, teethers and teething toys) use material that resists the act of chewing, sucking and breaking into small-sized pieces or fragments; inclusion of tests for formamide, a solvent used in industrial applications such as the production of EVA (vinyl acetate) mats intended for children’s use; adoption of new test methods for toxicological tests, reducing or replacing the application of in vivo tests with the use of animals, among others.
Development
According to Abrinq, the toy sector currently has 405 national manufacturers, of which about 86% are micro and small companies that, in 2021, employed 36,500 workers. Data released by the entity at the International Toy Fair, in April this year, reveal that the Brazilian industry earned R$7.8 billion in 2021, an increase of 4% compared to the previous year, when revenue was R$7.5 billion. billion. For 2022, the expectation is that the sector’s revenue will grow around 6%, approaching R$ 8.3 billion.
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