Child resistant

What child resistant means

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The panels Which is a very specific age band The failure definition Five minutes, then a demonstration, then five more The demonstration is the interesting part And they are tested in pairs It is a test of the package, not the closure Which is the limit of what a catalog can say Ask the question in that form And it is not a child-proof package References

Not a claim about a closure. A result from a test on a package.

The panels

"Use from 1 to 4 groups of 50 children", composed by age: "Thirty percent of the children in each group shall be of age 42-44 months, 40% of the children in each group shall be of age 45-48 months, and 30% of the children in each group shall be of age 49-51 months."

Which is a very specific age band

Three and a half to four and a quarter years old. Old enough to have the strength and the hands, young enough not to have the sense, which is exactly the population the packaging exists for.

The failure definition

"Any child who opens the special packaging or gains access to its contents." Gains access matters: a package that can be defeated without being opened has failed.

Five minutes, then a demonstration, then five more

Each child gets "up to 5 minutes to open his/her package", and if they have not, the tester demonstrates on "a separate demo package", opening it "at a normal speed as if the tester were going to use the contents". Then another five minutes.

The demonstration is the interesting part

It tests whether the package resists a child who has watched an adult open it, which is how a child in a house learns. That is why there are two pass rates rather than one.

And they are tested in pairs

Which the protocol describes, and which models the real situation better than a child alone: two children working at a package get further than one.

It is a test of the package, not the closure

Container and closure together, with contents. The same cap on a different bottle is a different package and the result does not carry across.

Which is the limit of what a catalog can say

We can tell you a closure is sold as child resistant. Whether your package system passes is a test on your system, and the report belongs to whoever ran it.

Ask the question in that form

Not "is this child resistant" but "what package system has this closure been tested in, and against which substances". A supplier who can answer that is a supplier worth using.

And it is not a child-proof package

The standard is 85 percent, not 100. The protocol is honest about that and so should anybody selling the result be.

References

16 CFR 1700.20(a), the test protocol for special packaging. Child panels: "Use from 1 to 4 groups of 50 children", with "Thirty percent of the children in each group shall be of age 42-44 months, 40% of the children in each group shall be of age 45-48 months, and 30% of the children in each group shall be of age 49-51 months". A failure is "any child who opens the special packaging or gains access to its contents". Each child has "up to 5 minutes to open his/her package" and then "an additional 5 minutes" after the tester demonstrates opening on a separate demo package. Senior adult panel: "a group of 100 senior adults", with "Twenty five percent of the participants shall be 50-54 years of age, 25% of participants shall be 55-59 years of age, and 50% of the participants shall be 60-70 years old", and senior adult use effectiveness is "the percentage of adults who both opened the package in the first (5-minute) test period and opened and (if appropriate) properly resecured the package in the 1-minute test period". law.cornell.edu

16 CFR 1700.15(b), the standards for special packaging. Child resistant effectiveness of "not less than 85 percent without a demonstration and not less than 80 percent after a demonstration", or "not less than 80 percent" for unit packaging. And "special packaging shall have a senior adult use effectiveness (SAUE) of not less than 90%", with a younger adult test substituted for aerosol and metal container products that cannot use alternative packaging. law.cornell.edu

Written from 16 CFR 1700.14, 1700.15 and 1700.20, and from the catalog as it stood on 18 October 2026. Whether a package system is compliant special packaging is a test result on that container, that closure and that product, held by whoever ran the test. State pharmacy rules for veterinary dispensing exist, vary, and are not summarized here.