Behind the controversy over the testing of children's lacquer

Recently, the environmental protection of children's lacquer has been controversial again. The source of the problem is that on July 3, Consumer Report, a media focused on comparative testing of consumer goods and services, published an article on the Internet entitled "Seven Kids Paint Comparative Tests". Content shows: In March 2019, Consumer Report purchased seven kinds of children's lacquers (excellent products) from the market, such as Libang, Dorothy, Sankeshu, Carbury, Bauhinia lacquer, Huarun, Fenlin, etc. and sent them to the third-party testing institutions to check their free formaldehyde, VOC, contrast rate and comprehensive ability to resist contamination. Measure.

Tests showed that the seven children's lacquers tested in this test met the national mandatory standards, safety standards, and can be selected safely. Although many products Fenlin, Libang, Huarun and Bauhinia lacquers were labeled as "children's lacquers", they did not meet the national recommended standards for children's lacquers lacquers lacquers, but they met the mandatory standards. The article also points out that the imported brand Fenlin is the most expensive, but its performance is not good and its stain resistance is the worst. The content of formaldehyde in Libang children's lacquer is as high as 28mg/kg, which is far higher than the free formaldehyde content < 5 specified in the national recommended standard for children's lacquer. As soon as this report came out, the state responded quickly. On the same day (July 3), in response to the content of Consumer Report, a statement on its official website and micro-blog was issued that "the test results are not approved", and three questions were raised. First, the "Inspection Notice Letter" did not provide several credentials, product labels, batches and packages, complete test reports and tests for products. Institutions and related testing institutions, such as testing qualifications, in the absence of the above information, the results of this test can not be identified by our company.

Secondly, in the formulation design of Libang's children's lacquer products, the raw materials without free formaldehyde and VOC are strictly selected and designed according to the national standards of GB18582-2008, GB/T9756-2018 and GB/T34676-2017.

Third, the National Standard for Children's Lacquer (GB/T34676-2017) and the National Standard (GB18582-2008) mentioned in the Notice Letter for Detection are implemented by distillation method, while the standard for children's room (GB/T34676-2017) is detected by HPLC method, and the two methods are used for the determination of formaldehyde in the national standard (GB18582-2008). There is no comparability because of the different measurement methods and comparison standards. In fact, the safety performance of children's lacquer has been criticized in recent years. Many children's lacquers are labeled as safe and environmentally friendly. In fact, there is no difference between environmental protection standards and ordinary lacquers. The problems of "conceptual children's lacquers" and "gimmick children's lacquers" are common. Therefore, once children's lacquer brand fails to meet the standards or quality problems detected by third parties, it can always touch the pain points of consumers and arouse great concern.

Nandu Identification and Evaluation Laboratory of Southern Metropolitan Daily, in conjunction with Pacific Network Truth-seeking Laboratory, entrusted SGS Standard Technology Services Co., Ltd. to carry out hazardous substance testing on nine popular children's lacquer products. The results show that all the nine kinds of children's lacquers meet the requirements of compulsory national standards and belong to qualified products. However, with reference to the recommended national standard for children's paint, there are three coatings that exceed the national standard.

It can be seen that the focus of controversy lies mainly in the inconsistency of standards and the transparency of detection. Statistics show that there are three main standards for children's lacquer inspection: mandatory national standard GB18582-2008, the limits of harmful substances in interior decoration materials, interior wall coatings, children's lacquer recommended national standard GB/T34676-2017, children's interior decoration interior wall paint, general latex paint recommendation GB/T9756-2018, synthetic resin emulsion. Interior wall paint. The compulsory national standard is the standard that the State enforces the enterprises, while the recommendation standard state encourages the enterprises to adopt voluntarily and not enforce it.

The national standard of children's lacquer was officially implemented on May 1, 2018, which belongs to the industry initiative. Until then, no specific environmental standards have been set for children's wall paints. Compared with the compulsory national standard GB18582-2008, this standard is more stringent, mainly in three aspects: adding three new detection items of ethylene glycol ether and its lipids, alkyl phenol polyoxyethylene ether and asbestos content; more than 10 times the limit values of formaldehyde and VOC; and increasing the detection items of soluble heavy metal content from four to eight.

At present, the relevant standards of children's lacquer are mainly recommended standards, not mandatory standards. This may be related to the insufficient maturity of children's lacquer Market and the weak cost-bearing capacity of enterprises. Some insiders said that when conditions are ripe, compulsory standards for children's lacquer can be introduced in time to effectively drop the national standards and form a market access mechanism.

In addition, the opacity of the detection process is another major cause of controversy. For a long time, the testing and certification services of enterprises in China are mainly provided by the relevant institutions of the quality supervision system. Until 2014, when the state opened private capital to the third-party testing and certification industry, the number of private testing institutions began to increase sharply, and testing and certification has gradually become a big business.