In the case of an accident in a day care center a child playing with a pipe cleaner used for handicraft purposes is said to have come into contact with live parts of a VDE-approved socket-outlet with a shutter. According to the operator of the day care center, this socket-outlet was explicitly chosen because of the advertised "child protection".
For this reason, we would like to point out that the VDE marks license for a socket-outlet with a shutter is in no way suitable as proof of "child protection" or similar. The use of the VDE marks license for a socket-outlet with shutter in connection with terms such as "child-proof", "child protection" or similar must be classified as misleading. Continued use of the VDE mark in this context is therefore considered misuse of the VDE mark and will result in the VDE marks license being withdrawn. The VDE Institute will chase such occurrences from 1 July 2020.
Due to the serious incident described, our house has decided to apply additionally sub-clause10.5.1 of the current draft standards E DIN VDE 0620-1:2019-03 and E DIN VDE 0620-2-1:2019-05 for all new marks license tests of socket-outlets with shutters (this also applies to updates of existing certificates) from 1 May 2020 until the new edition of the standard comes into force. When applying gauge 13, no live parts must be accessible via the contact entry holes or via any other openings of the socket-outlet accessible in the installed condition.
We will contact all affected VDE mark license holders and inform them about the further procedure.
