Core tip: This is the first mandatory national standard for textile products for infants and children. Insiders pointed out that the implementation of the standards or children's clothing industry to usher in the cruelest shuffle.

With the advent of the second child era, people's demand for children's clothing is also rising. In order to further enhance the safety of textile products for infants and children, the National Standardization Management Committee issued the mandatory national standard gb31701-2015 "safety technical specification for infant and child textile products" and will be formally implemented in June 1, 2016.

This is the first mandatory national standard for textile products for infants and children. Insiders pointed out that the implementation of the standards or children's clothing industry to usher in the cruelest shuffle.

In fact, there are many safety problems in children's clothing products in China. Qiu Shaomei, a researcher at the China Research Institute, said in an interview with "China made news" that the formaldehyde content exceeded the standard first, mainly because some manufacturers used low cost finishing agents and auxiliaries in the production process. Excessive formaldehyde may cause respiratory or skin diseases and even lead to canceration. Not only that, some manufacturers also use banned dyes, such as decomposable aromatic amine dyes. These dyes are absorbed by the body and spread in the body, leading to lesions. And these dyes are colorless, tasteless, not easy to detect, and can not be used to reduce hazards through washing.

There are many hidden dangers in the decoration of children's clothing. Qiu Shaomei pointed out that the rope is too long and does not meet the national standards. It is easy to cause entanglement to infants and children, and can not be released in time.Moreover, the flame retardancy of children's clothing is low, and it is easy to cause burn injury to children when the fire happens.

In order to comprehensively standardize the safety performance of infant and children's clothing, the standard puts forward 6 limiting requirements for the 2 kinds of heavy metals, namely, plasticizer, lead and cadmium, in terms of chemical safety. At the same time, in terms of mechanical safety, there are detailed provisions for the different parts of the head, neck, shoulders and waist of children's clothing, requiring no rope for children and children under 7 years of age. In addition, the textile accessories also stipulate that attachments should have certain tensile strength and should not have sharp edges and sharp edges. In terms of combustion performance, the combustion performance of textile products for infants and children reaches 1 level (normal flammability) requirements.

According to the different safety requirements, the standard also classified children's clothing safety technology categories into three categories: A, B and C. Among them, class A is the best, followed by class B, and class C is the basic requirement. Infants and young children's textile products should be accords with class a requirements, and children's textile products with direct contact with skin should meet the requirements of category B at least. Children's textile products with direct contact with skin should at least meet the requirements of category C. At the same time, infants and young children's textile products should be filled with "baby products", and children's clothing should be labeled with standard number and safety category.

As the standard puts forward higher requirements for the use of dyes and auxiliaries in clothing, the environmental protection requirements are more stringent, and the technical requirements for clothing and chemical enterprises are higher. In this regard, Qiu Shaomei analysis, the use of higher price of environmental protection materials for clothing manufacturers means the rise in costs, profits of enterprises decline, which for some profitable enterprises, also faced with the possibility of being eliminated.

Qiu Shaomei also stressed that this technology will also create innovative pressure on upstream clothing dyestuffs and auxiliaries, and eliminate some backward production capacity. Garment manufacturers will eliminate a number of smaller and less profitable enterprises. Overall, the industry pattern will be adjusted. In addition, for export oriented enterprises, this requirement is closer to international standards and is an improvement in children's wear industry's participation in international competition.

Data show that the annual output growth rate of children's clothing industrial cluster in China is much higher than that of adult clothing, reaching 25%-30%. And this fast growing market has attracted many competitors from domestic and foreign luxury brands, sports brands and even online clothing brands, which has intensified competition in the industry.

From: China economic news reporter Wu Qiong