PD CEN TR 13387 — Child Use and Care Articles General Safety Guidelines Series

🧸 PD CEN/TR 13387 is a Published Document series issued by BSI adopting the European Committee for Standardization technical report CEN/TR 13387, providing a set of general safety guidelines for child use and care articles (such as infant beds, highchairs, pushchairs, baby walkers and related products). The series supersedes the 2004 edition of PD CEN/TR 13387 and comprises five parts covering safety philosophy and safety assessment, chemical hazards, mechanical hazards, thermal hazards, and product information with risk assessment. It is not a mandatory specification for any single product but provides a horizontal method for product safety design, risk assessment and standard development, widely referenced by the European and UK child-product standards framework.

💡 CEN/TR is a “Technical Report”, a guidance document without mandatory force. Its value lies in turning “safety” from an abstract slogan into an operational risk-assessment process: identify hazards → assess risk → take measures → verify residual risk.

1. Series Structure and Document Scope 📌

The series comprises five parts covering the principal risk dimensions of child products:

Document	Subject	Edition	Status
PD CEN/TR 13387-1	Safety philosophy and safety assessment	2015	Readable
PD CEN/TR 13387-2	Chemical hazards	2015	Readable
PD CEN/TR 13387-3	Mechanical hazards	2015	Readable
PD CEN/TR 13387-4	Thermal hazards	2015	Scanned
PD CEN/TR 13387-5	Product information and risk assessment	2015	Scanned

⚠️ Parts 4 and 5 are scanned versions whose full text cannot be extracted; they are summarised here in line with the series theme and consistent technical framework. Always refer to the BSI official published versions for specific clauses.

2. Safety Philosophy and Safety Assessment (Part 1) 🧭

Part 1 establishes the philosophical basis of the series. It stresses that “general safety” is first and foremost a risk-management framework: product designers should systematically identify hazards that may cause harm to children throughout the whole use process (including foreseeable misuse), and evaluate risk based on accident data, severity of harm and probability of occurrence. The standard gives the risk-assessment methodology and emphasises the hierarchy of safety design:

Inherently safe design: eliminate or reduce hazards by design first (e.g., rounded corners, anti-trap structures, avoiding small parts).
Protective measures: hazards that cannot be eliminated are controlled through guards, restricted functions, etc.
Information: residual risk is communicated to users through instructions, warnings and marking.

The standard also annexes anthropometric data and abilities of children from birth to 48 months, which is the essential basis for judging “whether a child can reach a hazard” and “what motor ability a child has at a given age”, and is the key to differentiating risk across age groups.

💡 Children are “non-standard users”: their height, grip strength, curiosity and tendency to put objects in their mouths differ from adults. The anthropometric and ability data in Part 1 exist precisely to let designers build “child behavioural characteristics” into the design input rather than judging by adult intuition alone.

3. Chemical Hazards (Part 2) 🧪

Part 2 focuses on chemical-substance risk in child products. It systematically reviews the relevant regulatory and policy background, including the key points of REACH (EU Registration, Evaluation, Authorisation and Restriction of Chemicals): registration, authorisation, restriction, requirements and recommendations for articles, and the Toy Safety Directive and its related standards. Chemical-hazard assessment emphasises:

Identifying chemical substances in the product that may migrate, be released, or be ingested/contacted by children (e.g., plasticisers, flame retardants, heavy metals, dyes, preservatives).
Assessing risk in combination with children’s exposure behaviour (mouthing, skin contact, inhalation) and exposure duration.
Paying attention to regulatory limits (e.g., REACH restriction list, Toy Safety Directive migration limits) and voluntary standard requirements.

Risk Dimension	Typical Substances of Concern	Assessment Focus
Mouthing	Migratable heavy metals, plasticisers, dyes	Saliva-simulated migration testing, limit comparison
Skin contact	Flame retardants, preservatives, azo dyes	Allergenic and irritant risk assessment
Inhalation	Volatile organic compounds, powders	Emission assessment, concentration limits

🚨 Chemical risk in child products is characterised by “low dose, long exposure, developmentally sensitive”. Part 2 stresses combining regulatory limits with children’s specific exposure behaviour; merely complying with “adult standards” is insufficient to demonstrate child-product safety.

4. Mechanical Hazards (Part 3) 🔧

Part 3 is a systematic guide to mechanical hazards. It first establishes the safety philosophy for mechanical hazards, then defines accessibility areas: using probes for fingers, toes and body parts to determine whether a child can reach a dangerous part. Mechanical-hazard types include:

Entrapment: head, neck, fingers or toes trapped in moving parts or gaps.
Shearing: cutting by relatively moving parts.
Puncturing/cutting: sharp edges and pointed corners.
Strangulation: cords, straps, open loops.
Falling/toppling: instability leading to overturning.
Suffocation/swallowing: small parts and detachable components.

The standard provides engineering criteria for each mechanical-hazard type: accessibility determination, probe dimensions, gap and clearance requirements, and corner radius, and emphasises that product information should state the intended age range and restrictions on use.

Hazard Type	Typical Source	Common Control Measure
Entrapment	Folding mechanisms, hinges, gaps	Limit clearance, anti-trap guards, locking devices
Strangulation	Cords, straps, drawstrings	Limit length, fix ends, avoid free loops
Sharp edges/corners	Metal/plastic edges, sharp corners	Chamfer, round, roll over
Small parts	Detachable parts, buttons, magnets	Size limits, non-detachable design, warning

⚠️ Mechanical hazards are among the highest-proportion causes of child-product accidents. The core value of Part 3 is the concept of “accessibility”: even if a dangerous part exists, if a child cannot reach it, the risk is controlled; conversely, a seemingly harmless gap within the accessible range may constitute entrapment risk.

5. Thermal Hazards and Product Information (Parts 4/5) 🔥

Part 4 addresses thermal hazards, including contact with hot surfaces (e.g., heaters, luminaires), fire/burning (material flammability), hot water/steam scalding, and cold burns. The assessment method parallels mechanical hazards: identify accessible heat sources, assess contact time and temperature, and control risk through insulation/temperature limitation/warning. Part 5 focuses on integrating product information with risk assessment: it stresses that instructions, warnings, intended age, assembly instructions, maintenance and safety notices must match product risk, and form part of the risk-control measures, achieving a “design + information” double safeguard.

6. Engineering Practice Application 🛠️

🔍 Product development: introduce the Part 1 risk-assessment process from concept and detailed design, establishing a closed loop of “hazard list — risk matrix — control measures”.
🔧 Material selection: per Part 2, avoid high-risk chemicals, prefer materials meeting regulatory limits with low migration, and retain compliance documentation.
📊 Structural verification: per Part 3, verify accessibility and gap sizes with probes and feeler gauges, and perform dedicated verification of folding, locking and stability.
📋 Compliance documentation: integrate risk-assessment report, material declarations, test reports and instructions into a complete technical documentation package for EU/UK market access (CE/UKCA marking).

7. Frequently Asked Questions ❓

❓ Q: Is PD CEN/TR 13387 mandatory?
A: CEN/TR is a technical report, a guidance document without mandatory force. However, its methods are widely referenced by the EU and UK child-product standards framework and are often used as the assessment and compliance basis in practice.

❓ Q: What is the anthropometric data in Part 1 used for?
A: It provides height, weight, grip and motor-ability data for children 0 to 48 months, used to judge whether a child can reach a hazard or perform a given behaviour — the basis for “accessibility” assessment.

❓ Q: What is the most important concept in mechanical-hazard assessment?
A: “Accessibility”. First use standard probes to judge whether a dangerous part is reachable, then assess the severity and probability of the reachable hazard; unreachable hazards have relatively controlled risk.

❓ Q: Why must chemical-hazard assessment consider children’s exposure specifically?
A: Children have a high tendency to mouth objects, long skin-contact duration and higher intake per unit body weight, and are in a developmentally sensitive period; assessing only by adult exposure underestimates risk, so child behaviour and regulatory limits must be combined.

❓ Q: What role does product information (Part 5) play in risk control?
A: It is the last link of risk-control measures: for residual risk that design cannot eliminate, communicate the intended age, warnings, use and assembly instructions to users, achieving a complete “design + information” safeguard.

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