New European Safety Barriers Standard (EN 1930:2011)

A revised European standard EN 1930:2011 was published by the European Committee for Standardization (CEN) in December 2011. It concerns the domestic indoor use of child safety barriers across door openings and replaces the current standard EN1930: 2000 and its amendment A1: 2005. European National Standard Organizations bound to CEN/CENELEC have to publish this new document until June 30, 2012.

Safety barriers used in the home are intended to guard crawling infants and toddlers against accidents such as falling down the stairs and access to the many dangers present in kitchens and bathrooms, such as burns from touching the stove, scalds or impacts from pulling down cooking pots and poisoning from drinking cleaning fluids. Young children under 2 years of age are sometimes violent at play and are always naturally curious and unaware of dangers. They often find inventive ways to overcome barriers such as baby gates, calling for equally inventive safety features to prevent them from doing so.

The 32 national standards organizations bound to CEN (http://www.cen.eu/cen/Sectors/Sectors/Consumer%20products/Pages/default.aspx) have 6 months, in this case until June 30, 2012, to adopt the new standard into their national legislations. In February and March 2012, the French standard (NF EN 1930), the German standard (DIN EN 1930) and the British standard (BS EN 1930) were published without amendment in the journals of their national standards bodies. Further national standards are due for publication soon.

The main changes in the revised standard are the introduction of new hip and finger probes, a new rattle test for the security of the gate as well as improvements to locking devices and the impact test. Some tests in the previous standard have been dropped, on the grounds they are not reproducible, including the ball and chain test and “out of alignment” assessment.

The rattle test enables checking of the fixings, locking devices and opening systems. For example, self closing mechanisms must lock automatically with a visual or audible alert to indicate the barrier is either closed or remains open. The impact test now includes a description of a test frame that will provide a more reproducible test.

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This release was published on openPR.