Music... Music and Clapping....
Music.... Having a larger facility
with more high tech equipment will help the CPSC be more efficient and productive
in testing products, products that can pose a danger to consumers.
I would like to welcome you to the outdoor power sports testing laboratory.
This laboratory is equipped with data acquisition equipment as well
as this tilt table built in the floor
where perform the parking brake test that is part of the standard.
As you can see the vehicle on the left continues to move.
The standard says that vehicle should be able to maintain its position
on this slope facing both downhill forewords and backwards for 5 minutes without failing
and clearly the one on the left does not pass that test.
This is the cyclic testing lab.
What we do here is we simulate the lifetime use of cribs for example,
by running them through our crib shaker test, crib impacter test,
side rail impact test, and then our slat test.
And combined, this simulates a lifetime of use by a typical child out in the field.
This is the durable children's product testing area we have the toy lab also over here
and what I'm going to be showing your guys today is the Walker stair test.
What we are looking for are skid pads on the underside of the baby walker.
Right now there are only castors on it.
There should be rubber pads here so that when it falls
over stairs it stops short and doesn't tumble.
The velocity of the 8 pound weight falling will create a set speed
that we know a child can achieve.
Well obviously if it had the skid pads on it, it would have stopped short
and it wouldn't have gone over the edge.
This is the impact testing area and what we are looking for here are any small parts
or sharp edges that break off on an impacting.
Depending on how old the child is depends on how high we'll drop it from.
Pretty simple test, but we are going to take it
down until it breaks one of the laser beams but not both.
That would be too far.
That would be outside the regulation.
And again if we get any small parts or sharp edges out of that, that's a failure.
You are in the bike helmet impact lab and here we test helmets.
This particular test raises up the helmet so that it reaches an impact velocity
of approximately 11 to 14 miles per hour, and that is roughly comparable to a lot
of the bicycle helmet impacts and injuries.
This is an important test because it insures that bike helmets comply
with the federal regulations and in this particular example I've got in my hand.
On the outside it looks very, very similar to anything else you would see in the market place.
And yet it broke.
So that's why we test.
This is the CPSC flammability laboratory.
We have the capability of evaluating mattresses, mattress pads,
and children's sleepwear to the federal regulation.
In this new lab space we have a special burn room
that is capable of handling larger scale fires.
The room is instrumented with a special hood
that can measure the heat released from the fire below.
This is an example of the children's sleepwear test.
The sample is hung in a test cabinet.
A small flame is held for 3 seconds to the bottom edge.
It's a vertical ignition.
Once the specimen is ignited it is allowed to burn until completion.
As you can see from this example, large flames, burning vigorously,
it would not give the child the opportunity to react very quickly.
And therefore this sample fails the test.
We're here in the chemistry lab of the CPSC.
And we test children's products for lead in paint and plastics.
We're testing using X-Ray fluorescence and that is something we do,
with the same instruments, at our ports of entry.
We also have special kind of XRF called HD XRF which we can be used to measure lead in paint
down to 0.009 percent, which is the regulatory limit.
One of the other things we do in the chemistry lab is test for Phthalates.
We have a brand new instrument called a direct analysis in real time mass spectrometer.
It's a real advantage for testing for Phthalates.
Traditional testing requires a lot of sample preparation, we have to cut the sample up,
dissolve it in some harsh organic solvents, we run instruments
with a run time can be anywhere from 20 minutes to a half hour.
But this direct analysis instrument allows to put the sample
in without any sample preparation.
We just take a quick glass tube.
Rub it on top of the sample to get some of the material off.
And put it into the instrument, hot gas runs over the sample and brings it
into the instrument and the instrument actually measures the mass
of the different molecules that enter.
We can look at the print out.
Get an idea of what molecules are in there.
And then we get a quick yes or no answer, are there Phthalates?
The CPSC Stands for safety and this state of the art facility is a testament
to our renewed commitment in keeping families safe.
Music.... Music.....
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