• RELATED STORIES

• Children’s press Firefly to launch at Hay

  A new Wales-based children&...

• In depth: New Adult

  If last year’s erotic...

• Neil Gaiman

  You might think you’r...

• Bookaboo partners with TES

  CITV children’s book ...

• Publishers donate Nook e-books to Get London Reading

  Major publishers are donati...

New legislation 'prohibitive', say publishers

06.02.12 | Caroline Horn

Children's publishers are preparing for changes to legislation that will introduce a raft of new testing requirements for children's books and novelty products. A revision of the standard, EN71 Part Three, will more than double the number of chemicals publishers need to test for next summer—up from eight to 19.

Debbie Knight, who is responsible for safety and compliance at production consultancy firm Imago Publishing, said: "It is becoming very complex to make certain kinds of books at a time when publishers want to make their books more interesting in order to compete with digital formats."

At Egmont, product safety manager Kristina Croser said: "It will be prohibitive to test for these 19 heavy metals in every book we make. It puts a greater onus on us all to find out what is in the products we are using, although there will be resistance from some suppliers to tell us exactly what we need to test for."

Publishers are working together to develop their own database of products and suppliers, the Publishing Industry Product Safety Forum (PIPS), to help them conform to the new regulations—including Registration, Evaluation, Authorisation & Restriction of Chemicals (Reach) and the revised Toy Safety Directive.

• Caroline Horn
• children's
• compliance
• Egmont
• Kristina Crosser
• legal
• legislation
• publishers