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Luísa Mosque MP
-1-
Draft Resolution No. 517 /X/( 4 th)
It recommends the Government to undertake the legislative changes that
adept at new scientific and technological knowledge and that
improve the safety of toys, before and after your entry into the
market.
The Portuguese Association of Consumer Protection-DECO-between the month of June
and July 2008, tested 22 toys for sale in Portugal, procedure also followed
by some counterparts in other European countries, considering the legislation in force
either in the Member States-Members in particular, or the Council Directive 88 /378/CEE, of
May 3, 1988 on the approximation of the laws of the Member States
relating to the safety of toys.
Of the toys tested (22) in Portugal alone, they chumed 14.
States the DECO Inspectorate Protest that:
" Of the 22 products assessed, 9 record excessive and prohibited levels of flatates, a
toxic substance. [And that] The act of the child to bring to the mouth a toy with this chemist
can have serious consequences on health. " [Were found] " illegal levels of
formaldehyde and cadmium. These chemical threats are invisible but they put health into question
of the newer. In extreme cases they cause severe pulmonary problems and even
the death. "; [toys] " without the mandatory information in the labeling, toys with
very small and sharp pieces and of easy disassembly and dangerous packaging ".
Since 1993 DECO makes this assessment work and, without exception, continue
finding serious safety problems in the toys placed on the market at
provision of parents and children.
Luísa Mosque MP
-2-
In July 2008, the Food and Economic Security Authority (ASAE)
seized 1053 toys, during the supervision of 110 economic operators.
Also in September 2008 a RAPEX, the Union's Rapid Alert System
European, received 47 notifications regarding the insecurity of the toys available in the
market.
In the meantime, a new European Directive that aims to increase the security of the
toys, requiring the precautionary principle to be present from conception to
manufacturing of the products, was approved on 12/18/2008 by the European Parliament.
It is a text that modernizes the previous Council Directive 88 /378/CEE of 3 of
May 1988 on the approximation of the laws of the Member States relating to
to the safety of toys, in place more than twenty years ago and so it presents
loopholes that arise, above all, from the fact that the market has continued to receive new
products / toys that use new technologies and new materials and hence result
other types of risks to the health and safety of children.
In the face of the reality and the gravity of the matter in question, nothing prevents, before by the
contrary, that Portugal should take, since already, measures that guarantee the safety of children
up to the age of 14 as it provides for the new Directive.
Scientific research currently allows to eliminate more objective risks
of undesirable health.
It is not possible to continue to allow the use of carcinogenic substances,
mutagenic or toxic in toys.
It is critical to ensure that toys are subject to an evaluation by part
of an independent laboratory prior to its placing on the market.
It is imperative to protect from the fullest possible form the children, while
most vulnerable consumers.
The new scientific knowledge available to us and the serious statistical data
related to the risks and which are known oblique the urgency of measures.
It is important to mention that about 80% of toys marketed in the Union
European are imported and during the year 2007, they were removed from the market millions of
toys, for safety reasons, manufactured fóra from the community space.
Luísa Mosque MP
-3-
Being so, the Assembly of the Republic recommends the Government, under
of the applicable constitutional and regimental provisions, which will proceed to the changes
legislative adherents to new scientific and technological knowledge and
that improve the safety of toys, before and after their entry into the
market:
1-Strictly Ensuring the safety requirements of toys, forbidding
the use of chemical substances classified as carcinogenic, mutagenic
or toxic for reproduction and of allergenic substances and metals;
2-Reducing the legal limits of all substances, whose level of
safety cannot be guaranteed, considering the stadium of evolution of the
scientific knowledge;
3-Obligation to the rigorous information of the physical and mechanical properties of the
toys;
4-Strengthening the effectiveness and efficiency of the supervising activity with
effective, proportionate and dissuasive consequences;
5-Encouraging the use of non-hazardous substances or technologies
where there are suitable and technically feasible alternatives;
6-Obligation to the issuance of safety certification of all toys
placed on the market.
Assembly of the Republic, June 24, 2009
The Member
(Luísa Mosque)