Luísa Mosque MP

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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

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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

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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)