New SATRA RSL available

Issue 18 contains changes relevant to footwear producers.

The SATRA Footwear Restricted Substances List (RSL) is published twice each year, and the latest edition of this important document – issue 18 – is now available to SATRA members. This revised publication includes information about the restricted substances that are applicable to materials typically used in footwear. The key change it contains concerns the reduction in extractable chromium VI in the European Toy Safety Directive (TSD).

The maximum amount of chromium VI extracted from category III materials (which would include the types of materials used in footwear) has been reduced from 0.2mg/kg to 0.053mg/kg. This change applies from 18th November 2019 in accordance with Commission Directive (EU) 2018/725 and, although the TSD is only relevant to toys, under due diligence, footwear manufacturers and suppliers have legal responsibilities to demonstrate their products are safe to the end users. Hence, conformance with the TSD is often used to demonstrate general product safety for children’s footwear.

The most recent list of restricted substances in REACH Annex XVII was published on 30th July 2019 and contains 70 entries. These have been considered when collating information for our restricted substances lists along with legislation in the USA, South Korea and national legislation within European countries.

SATRA’s ISO 17025-accredited chemical testing laboratory routinely tests footwear, footwear components, leathergoods and other consumer products for the presence of restricted substances. This testing can be conducted on materials before articles are produced, or we can test samples from bulk production. Once testing has been completed, results can be reported against the legislative requirements, or against individual brand or retailers’ specifications depending on our customer’s request.

Publishing Data

This article was originally published on page 4 of the October 2019 issue of SATRA Bulletin.

Other articles from this issue »

---