The US Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) accepted the staff recommendations to adopt the revised Toy Safety Standard ASTM 963-08 with the exception of change resulting in exclusion of section 4.27 relating to toy chests. The American Society of Testing and Materials (ASTM) published the revised Standard, ASTM F963-08 on 17 Feb, 2009.

The new edition, ASTM F963-08, will become the mandatory toy safety standard under CPSIA section 106 on 17 August, 2009. The Commission believes that ASTM F963-08 is an improvement over the previous version, ASTM F963-07e1. However, the CPSC disagreed with the exclusion of section 4.27 pertaining to the toy chests from ASTM F963-08. By deleting the Toy Chest safety requirements from the mandatory ASTM F963 Standard and allowing them to be covered by the existing voluntary ASTM F834 Standard, the CPSC believes that the proposed revision would not improve the safety of the consumer product covered by the ASTM F963-08 Standard. In addition the section 4.2 and Annex 4 will continue to stay as non-mandatory as per section 106 of CPSIA per specific terms included by the Congress.

Major changes in the 2008 version compared to the current 2007 toy safety standard have been summarized and published in our SGS Safeguards (NO. 046/09 March 2009):

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