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Voluntary Standards
In the vast majority of cases standards are voluntary.
They are there to assist in giving a better product or
service to customers and thus gain competitive advantage.
In doing this over time they increase the value of the
nation’s output.
Occasionally standards are cited in regulation. In these
circumstances they become mandatory. This is the case
with the standards covering child resistant packaging.
It is good and laudable that standards can be used in this
way. Regulators may eliminate uncertainty by citing a
standard rather than seeking to describe its contents or
precepts. This is particularly true with supranational
regulators for example the European Commission or
certain other trading blocks.
Special Needs
Active life doesn’t end at 70 and in the ISO community we are
developing a suite of standards to assist elderly people with all
packaging, for example BS ISO 174805 contains a test using a
panel of people aged 65-80 to help ensure that this important
sector is given due consideration and their special needs are met.
There is a fourth child resistant packaging standard, BS EN ISO
13127. This consists of mechanical test methods to certify a panel
tested reclosable pack that has been subjected to minor changes.
The mischief that the standards are designed to overcome
is twofold:
Primarily, child resistant packs save lives. This is borne out by a
number of health authorities in both the developed and developing
world, most notably the World Health Organisation that, in 2008,
described child resistant packaging as the ‘best documented
preventative of child poisoning in the developed world’. One of the
aims of myself and colleagues, in the standards writing community
is to increase this to the developing world.
Open ability by older adults is just as important as child resistance.
If an adult is unable to open a pack, be it medicine, household
products, or garden products then a number of problems arise.
The most serious is that the older adult simply leaves the pack
open after first use. This can make dangerous products available
to exploring and curious children, with absolutely no protection from
the packaging. If the product is medicine with difficult to open
packaging, a wary older adult may decant it with similar
dangerous results.
Finally older adults, who quite often have to cope with chronic
health conditions, may be pushed into non-compliance by
packaging that they cannot open. This impacts severely on the
health of both the individual and the nation.
Adaptable Concepts
Standards are not sets of rules; they are sets of concepts
from which we make our own rules. They employ key
words: Shall-Which is an instruction, Should–Which is a
recommendation, May-Which is a permission and
Can-Which is a possibility or potential.
As such, standards can and are validly used worldwide,
their texts and concepts being adaptable to any culture
ethos or system. They are therefore a boon to regulators
because they give adaptable certainty of action.
Conversely, citing a description instead of the standard
makes for subjectivity and error.
This occurred recently when the European Commission
sought to regulate in the case of soluble packaging, things
like dishwasher tabs and soft detergent capsules. These
are potentially extremely dangerous while at the same time
they are colourful and attractive to children.
The commission knew in 2014 that the majority of
manufacturers couldn’t comply with the relevant child
resistant standard, BS EN ISO 8317 or BS EN 862. So
instead of citing the standard and giving a transition period
to ease the regulatory impact, they incorporated some
words from the standard.
They said that containers must be difficult for children to
open within a reasonable period but not difficult for adults
to use properly. In doing so they exchanged certainty for
error and objectivity for subjectivity.
Standards deliver quality, certainty and ultimately
confidence. In the case of the child resistant packaging
standards, they deliver child safety and to elderly and
chronically sick people they deliver the confidence that
comes with ease of use.