Policy Standards For Children's Furniture In Environmental Design

The U. S. Consumer Product Safety Commission (U. S. CPSC) is in charge of protecting the public from illogical dangers of injury or death from different types of consumer products. Over the past 30 years CPSC continuously decreased the rate of injury or death related to consumer products. According to the U. S. CPSC (n. d. b), the meaning of a ‘children’s product’ is “a consumer product designed or intended primarily for children 12 years of age or younger”.

There are safety regulations for children’s products such as toys, cribs, car seat, and flammability of sleepwear. For example, to illustrate the scarcity of data relative to built environment, the following examples offer an entry into this paradigm. The Consumer Product Safety Improvement Act (CPSIA) under U. S. CPSC commands that all children’s products be tested for lead content. According to the American Society of Testing and Materials (ASTM) F963 and CPSC 16 CFR 1303, manufacturers of children’s products should not produce to sell toys that contain more than 600 ppm of lead. For the child safety seat, the national recommendation is to use booster seats until children are able to use an adult safety belt properly. According to the Texas Department of Public Safety (2000), this is when a child turns eight years old, where the height is approximately 4 feet 9 inches. Some states have child safety seat laws to enforce children to use booster seats until they turn eight years old.

Another example of children’s products safety regulation is sleepwear flammability regulations. There are two regulations, CPSC 16 CFR 1615 and 1616 which are categorized by sizes; size 0 to 6X and size 7 to 14. These regulations indicate that manufacturers should sell tight-fitting sleepwear with hang tags and neck labels demonstrating that the fabric is not flame-resistant.

There are many regulations regarding children safety, but standards for children furniture are scarce, and if any, it focuses on flammability of furniture fabric. However, there is no regulation or any standard measurements for developing children’s furniture for age 2 to 5. Children age 2-5 share furniture in public with all different age groups including adults. They live in the same environment as adults or teens. For example, when a two year old child is sitting on the same size chair with 5 year old child, the 2 year old child is dangling on the chair whereas the 5 year old child might flip the chair over because the chair is too small for him or her.

Risk around children 2 to 5 years old has been overlooked for a long time. Understanding anthropometric data is necessary for children product designers to ensure the safety of these products. However, the main resources of children’s anthropometric data are over two decades old. The ASTM D5826 is the most reliable source for children 2 to 7 years old body dimensions, and the original data was based on the research studied by the U. S. Department of Agriculture in the 1930s. The ASTM D5826 is also referred by the charts from the National Center for Health Statistics in 1980 and the Anthropometric Study of U. S. Infants and Children conducted by the University of Michigan in 1977.

Body dimensions for children in the present are significantly different than those in the past. According to Shin & Istook (2008) & Stone (2007), current children have gained more weight notably over the past decade, and the apparel industry, for instance, are paying attention to dramatic growth on overweight children, thus adding larger sizes to clothing stock. However, according to Shin & Istook (2008), adding larger sizes for heavier children is not a solution for these children since the different stages of children’s growth will result in different body proportions.

The research conducted by Evans, Courtney, & Fok indicated that the dimensions of body proportion varied with the age range. For example, the ratio of sitting height to stature for boys varied from 55. 9% at age 6 to 52. 4% at age 13. Proportions of other body dimensions also varied. Therefore, using mean sectional proportions is not appropriate to estimate individual body parameters from one body dimension such as stature. Thus, as age is a critical aspect for design, anthropometric data is essential to represent the age population. Several researches have been conducted about the relation of school furniture and body dimensions of schoolchildren. However, it is difficult to find research of 2 to 5 years old age group population, or research that addresses issues of policies and standards for children’s products.