Pl aying Safe
By KENNETH J. ROBINSON NOr so long ago con. scientious parents were worried about their child- ren acquiring 'the ideal bedtime companion. This was not an educa- tional plaything like The dog-eared Penguin that now lurks beneath nur- sery pillows. It was a luminous teddy-bear ('1 glow in the dark'). and it
alarmed imaginative Pie who suspected it would make their (iten radio-active. The manufacturers of :netts toys quickly assured us that luminosity Atli be obtained without radiation, as the lit'strY of Health had proved while testing teen- tatirs' socks. It was a great relief to know we ?hoard, tic' safely put glowing plastics into the toy ?coard, to join all the other objects that 4khlen young lives—like poison-painted dolls tla.' highly-inflammable dresses, sharp metal th,„,4; bicycles with unreliable stabilisers and '"wnrk mechanisms with finger-tearing parts. Iftio You u are a hypersensitive parent you may toh" You have this question of safe toys under
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. But your children will soon be opening crackers and stockings. and un- thaielling--probably without supervision—toys 4,;„11'ight poison, cut or choke them. It is the i8."°wable toy I'm most afraid of. A few weeks 1,0,131 was just in time to stop my two-year-old ta',''uliocating himself with a plastics tap from 0c bath. It had looked .harmless enough corn- iad'ed with the lethal toys around iCin the shop- 4 thinking not of guns and bows and ws, but of stuffed animals with sharp. re- chhiable glass eyes or with nylon whiskers that -(1 dO as much internal damage as fish bones.
have manufacturers say that children usually lave accidents because they are playing with %;hs unsuitable for their age group. But even
°f the better nursery-age stuff is thought-
havq constructed. A lot of pull-along toys arihe marble-sized balls on the end of the iha'8 it is no defenee for manufacturers to say a smooth, round object can be swallowed h y�itc a neatly. The British Medical Association o Pointed out that there is always the danger if tar child coughing an object into. its lungs. And there object is not made of metal it may remain
re, undetected by X-rays.
Ihior You belong to the complacent school of htitught which has survived, man and boy, with- hial,li 1ieking lead paint off your soldiers or inhaling 141 bearings from your rattle, you should tele- rk, lie the Royal Society for the Prevention ot 4:dents before asking what all the fuss is torut. I shall not appal you here with gruesome aler'es. Instead let me open the month of com- b eial cheer and inflammable tinsel with the (11 news that twelve orgalisations have re-
cently come together to find ways -of improving the design standards of toy production. Their committee was set up by the British Standards Institution after the Portsmouth Chamber of Commerce had produced an alarming report on 'Playing in Safety ' This report showed that most of the accidents involving children and toys, in- vestigated over a period of three years. were the result of faults in the toys.
What can the 'Safety in Toys' committee do? By this time next year it hopes to produce a British Standard on the subject. Most of the recommendations published will. 1 imagine, be sound common sense. For instance, toys for mere babies should certainly have no parts small enough to swallow, or sharp enough to do damage. (The committee may well suggest that rattles should not contain seeds—which have been known to swell in the windpipe—or plastic pellets, but should be filled with rice or sugar--even if bright babies find out about it, with an inevitable increase in breakages.) Metal toys should be die-cast from pressed steel, thus giving less chance of sharp edges than if they were made from sheet metal. Brittle plastics should not be used, because dangerous edges are formed when they break. Clockwork mechanism should be safely enclosed. Colours should be non-toxic 1 and non-lick-offable. No inflammable materials should be used. And mobile equipment, like bicycles, should not discard its nuts and bolts all over the landing.
Two other important points are- already- covered by British Standards: one is the use of safe transformers for electric railways; the other is the use of hygienic packing in dolls. There is, in fact, an Act of Parliament called the'''Rag, Flock and Other Filling Materials Act. 1951.' So you Can at least be sure of the quality of one type of toy—unless it is imported. The Board of Trade makes no effort to ensure that toys ad- mitted into the country are safe. In fact some of the most dangerous toys are the foreign ones that you see in street markets.
One thing worries me. The British Standards Institution says it cannot concern itself with toys which are inevitably rather dangerous in use, like guns or bows and arrows, I think it can and should. And I speak with considerable feeling as a survivor of the arrows used by Metro- GolcAyn-Mayer in the Battle of Tintagel (1953) --- -a battle fought for two guineas a day. by holidAymakers and by tough Cornish locals who had no scruples about removing the rubber tips from their weapons. When I remember the stinging arrows of outrageous fortune hunters I am sure children should be prevented from using similar devices. The missiles fired from all toy weapons should surely be considered by the BSI committee. Could it not recommend that toy missiles should never be capable of destroying sight? Or would the manufacturers talk it into thinking such a suggestion unrealistic?
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