Child-resistant closures
These tests are crucial to ensure child safety regarding household chemical products.
Reclosable packaging is packaging that can be reclosed after being opened for the first time and maintain the same level of safety without losing this safety after successive uses while the packaged product is being consumed.
Since 2016, packaging with an opening-closing system containing chemical products (e.g. detergents, cleaning products, medicines) intended for household use must be tested to confirm that an adult can open it and access the contents, but a child is not able to do so.
What is closure testing?
AIMPLAS laboratories are ENAC accredited for tests to verify compliance with standard UNE-EN ISO 8317: Child-resistant packaging. Requirements and test procedures for reclosable packaging.
The test assesses the accessibility of this packaging using a broad panel of people, including children aged 42-51 months (maximum 200 children) and adults aged 50-70 (100 adults).
According to the standard, a family of similar containers can be grouped by common characteristics in order to test the most representative containers without having to test the whole family of containers, thus reducing the number of tests and the cost. Assessment must be carried out on the container/closure assembly. It is not possible to assess only the cap.
The tests of this standard are carried out with an inert substitute product so as not to endanger the health of the test panellists and each panellist has five minutes to open the container.
Testing is considered positive (successful) when at least 85% of the children are unable to open the package and at least 90% of the adults are able to open and close it without problems.
Certifications
