Secondary research | Product safety
3.3. Product safety This study is done to find out the standard practices to ensure safety in the products to be designed. Things like potential hazards, guidelines for parents and buyers, saftey regulations of the makers are studied. Toy safety is the practice of ensuring that toys are safe, usually through the application of set safety standards.[9]
Potential Hazards: • Ingestion of magnetic parts - Increasing popularity of strong magnets as toys has led to their ingestion by children, putting them at risk of potentially harmful gastrointestinal tract injuries.[10] • Choking or aspiration of small parts of the toy - A choking hazard is any object that could be caught in a child’s throat blocking their airway and making it difficult or impossible to breathe. • Cuts by sharp parts of the toy - Toys made of brittle plastic or glass can break easily, exposing sharp points and edges. Wooden, metal, and plastic toys sometimes have sharp edges due to poor construction • Propelled objects - Motor toy vehicles incidents involving hair - Projectiles – guided missiles and other flying toys – can be turned into weapons and cause injury, to the eyes in particular • Chemical substance - In order to make toys more rigid or flexible, or to make them flame retardant, manufacturers add chemicals to the plastic, paint and fabric. Toys can contain toxic chemicals such as BPA, PVC, lead, phthalates, cadmium, chlorine, and arsenic.[11]
Image.12. Radiographs (anteroposterior view)
Image.13. Small parts in toys
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