Child Safe Water Bottles and CPSIA

ETBChild_safeThe top question we are asked is, “Children under 13 will be primary users of my water bottles. Why can I only consider certain bottles on your website?”

We want every client to understand the answer to this GREAT question about child safe water bottles.

In 2008, the President signed into law the Consumer Product Safety Improvement act (CPSIA). We won’t bore you with the legal details, but basically CPSIA ensures the safety of consumer products—especially children’s products.

Rest assured that ALL of our water bottles are tested for applicable FDA standards (like BPA and lead). Beyond that, the CPSIA specifies four age groups, and mandates certain testing that a product must undergo to be saleable to a specific population:

0-3 years of age: Water bottles must not contain small parts, must not detach small parts, and must not contain any sharp edges. This is why there are VERY few water bottles approved for use in this age group—think about the popularity of push-pull spouts and twist off caps. Sippy cups are the norm here (and we do sell them, though they are not on our website. Contact us for more information)

3-8 years of age: Water bottles for this age group MAY include small parts or may detach small parts as a result of use and abuse testing, but also may have to have small parts warning statements (if applicable). Use and abuse testing is very costly, and many factories opt out of these tests. This is why the majority of our child-safe water bottles are tested and approved for use by children ages 8 and older.

8-12 years of age: Water bottles for this age group are exempt from small parts, sharp points, and sharp edge requirements. However, they still must be tested for other CPSIA requirements for children’s products (such as lower lead thresholds) that adult-intended water bottles do not have to undergo.

13+ years of age: The CPSIA requirements for children’s products do not apply to water bottles distributed to children 13 years and older. All of
our water bottles are approved for use by children & adults 13 years of age or older.  Please keep in mind that this is not to say that our over-12
water bottles are not safe for children under 12. This just means they haven’t gone through the rigorous (and expensive) CPSIA testing standards for children under the age of 13.

So, if you represent an organization that services children, or one that’s primarily marketing to children under the age of 13, you can be confident in knowing that Bulletin Bottle [.com] takes the CPSIA very seriously. We are not trying to make your selection process harder (actually, we are constantly looking to expand our child-safe water bottle selection!). We just want you and yours to be as safe as possible when using our bottles.

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