Ageing and wear in polymeric child articles This report targets child use and care articles, toys and playground equipment. These products will in this report collectively be referred to as ‘child articles’. It is the authors’ experience that polymers are getting more and more frequent in child articles, probably since they are cheaper and in many ways easier to process than metals. This is not an unwanted development in itself, but the choice of material has to be carefully made since the material properties of polymers vary greatly depending on the type and amount of additives and this can not be assessed visually. In addition they degrade with time due to environmental influence. To verify the properties of a polymer the material has to be tested. One of the challenges with polymers is that they all have a limited lifetime. They degrade over time and might lose almost all their strength, leading to material failure and, in the worst case scenario, accidents. It is a fact that accidents happen due to material failure, although it is hard to trace the true cause in accident statistics. In this report the term ‘ageing’ will be used for chemical degradation of the material structure due to light and/or heat exposure and ‘wear’ refers to mechanical degradation as a result of mechanical stress and contact. The current regulation covers property changes in polymers during the lifetime of a product insufficiently, if at all. Ageing of materials is virtually non-existing in existing child article standards. During its life a product is subjected to all kinds of environmental factors which more or less lead to reduction of function of the product. All products get worn, in one way or another, when used and the surrounding environment affects the material of the product. These effects are greater or lesser depending on usage and the harshness of the surrounding environment, as well as material choice and other qualities of the product. Therefore the material and processing have to be chosen based on the knowledge of the environment in which the product will be used as well as the expected lifetime. This process is called environmental design or environmental engineering. In order to simplify the material selection process when a product is developed, it is recommended to compose a material qualification system for child articles. This system can preferably be based on existing systems from other industries. This study recommends that the requirements and test methods proposed in Chapter 5 are considered when new standards for child articles are being developed or when existing standards are being revised. It is also recommended to perform a risk analysis to identify the hazards of a product.