Hi, everyone. I'm really looking forward to sharing some of my content with you this evening. Now, when Mel and I were organizing this event, she said, look, Debbie, expect around 40 or 50 people to come. That's what the normal amount of people they can get to these is over 100 of you here tonight. I think that just goes to show the real interest in this area. So I'm really looking forward to sharing the content that I have with you tonight. Well, I'd like to understand a little bit about what brought you along tonight. So who is here because I'd like to get some more, some benefit for themselves to build a more of a personal mindfulness practice. Who's here for some tips and tricks for themselves? Nice. Who is here because they're perhaps thinking about, because they're perhaps thinking about taking mindfulness in some shape or form into their organization? A few of you. Lovely. And who is a little skeptical about mindfulness, if they're honest, but still curious? Yeah, a few people are going to be honest with me. Thank you. Who has just realized they're in the wrong lecture theatre? Anyone? Good. Excellent. OK. So the content that I'm going to share with you today, can the people at the back hear me? No. OK. Thank you. So, what I'm going to share with you today is a little bit about why I think mindfulness is important. A bit about the research. Oh, that's a bit better, isn't it? Can you hear me now? A little bit about the research, so the benefits of mindfulness, and finally how organizations are implementing mindfulness programs. But before I start, the easiest way to describe mindfulness is often to describe mindlessness. Now, tell me if any of this sounds familiar. A typical mindless day.  You check work email and scroll through Facebook and the Stuff website. You race into the kitchen to get you and your family out the door as quickly as you possibly can. You get to work, you sit down, determined to get the top three things on your priority list done today. You open your email. It floods with new emails, a quarter of which look urgent.  By the time lunchtime rolls around, you're physically exhausted even though you haven't even left your desk. You know you should go to the gym but instead you have lunch at your desk looking at Facebook and the Stuff website. By the time the afternoon rolls around, it ends up being a blur of meetings most of which you're physically present but your mind is off worrying about your to-do list. The last bit of time you have before you go home you end up distracting yourself with tiny things because the things on your to-do list look daunting. The car on the way home, all you do is berate yourself about those three things you didn't get done and the fact that you haven't been to the gym and that's the tenth day in a row and why are you paying for this gym membership? Soon as you get home or you work yourself into such a ball of fury in the car all of this stuff going on in your mind that you walk through the door and unleash your ball of fury onto your unsuspecting family. You get through dinner and jobs and you get the kids into bed and you end up sitting on the couch staring aimlessly at the TV the glass of chardonnay in one hand and the crunchy bar in the other. Tell me if any of that sounds familiar to anyone in this room. Thank you, good. So that was pretty much a typical day for me about five years ago and still is some days if I'm honest but around that time I just felt like my whole life was an endless to-do list and I felt like I was constantly rushing. I remember I'd come home from work and I would look at my gorgeous kids but I couldn't see their faces, all I could see was an imaginary to-do list stamped to their foreheads, dinner, bath, bed, teeth, book any parents in the room can relate to that. Not only that but I was incredibly self-critical so I had this voice inside my head that was always harshly judging how I was doing and so what happened is that I was really grumpy and cross with my family but I was also really grumpy and cross with myself and yeah, I just kind of felt stuck and about that time a really good friend and colleague loaned me a book and it was called Mindfulness, Peace in a Frantic World. Now this book was written by Mark Williams, professor at Oxford University and it was no nonsense, everyday language and really easy to understand and there wasn't a kaftan or crystal in sight and so I thought this is pretty cool, I could try this mind for when I stuff out and as I read the book I learnt some pretty cool things like first of all to meditate you don't have to sit in the perfect lotus position up on a hill somewhere and snazzy lululemon gear which is pretty cool because that was never going to be me and I also learnt that I was never going to get so chilled out that I never got anything done so I decided to enrol myself in an eight week NBSR course that stands for Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction and that's offered globally and I took myself along for two hours every week for eight weeks and I learnt a whole range of formal and informal mindfulness practises and a whole lot around self-awareness and it was a really amazing experience for me and it made big changes in my life not only could I slow down and just enjoy the little things I could put the to-do list to the side but I was a lot kinder to myself and I don't know if anyone else has had this experience but I find that the kinder I am to myself the kinder I am to others so I just felt like I'd really found something that was quite practical and useful and I've since gone on to become a teacher delivering mindfulness based programmes to organisations because I could see that people needed help with this stuff it wasn't just me so let me share with you the reasons why I think mindfulness is useful scenes like this are becoming more and more common it's not okay anymore to do one thing at a time we have to do ten things at a time and do you know that even if you put your cell phone down and actually try and connect with the person next to you just having the phone on the table next to you actually interferes with your ability to connect with other people so we are living in a world of continual partial attention where we're just running around getting distracted all the time by technology and our pace of life now our screens are incredibly enticing aren't they look I know they are they're enticing for a lot of reasons first of all we're scared we're going to miss out on something so we have to constantly check our work emails second of all every time we see something new or novel on our screen the reward centre in our brain releases a small amount of dopamine so that's real good chemical so that's good right but we can get addicted to that so we're always looking on our phones for something new and novel in fact every time we click on a pop-up ad on Facebook or on LinkedIn they're making money off us because they get paid every time we do that but it's difficult to resist and third of all and I think this is a real issue is that people are using technology and busyness to avoid having to deal with difficult things that are happening in their lives or to deal with difficult emotions so I think pace of life and technology are really contributing to our sense of possibly unhappiness now a piece of research conducted by Microsoft a couple of years ago suggested that this has gotten so bad that we now have a shorter attention span than this guy I kid you not apparently we have an eight second attention span and a goldfish has a nine second attention span so it's scary isn't it so I think pace of life and technology but the next thing I think that is really messing with our heads is for some reason we're all stuck in this flawed notion that to be successful and happy we have to be busy all the time now if that was true why are we not all deliriously happy the truth is we're not we're rushing around so much we don't even stop to enjoy the small things the small things that could be moments of happiness for us so our pace of life and technology is really not contributing to our happiness the other factor involved here is that we're living in this kind of modern world that our bodies and brains are only still adjusting to because we've still got these primitive parts of our brains the same that our ancestors had so for example we've still got the fight and flight response most of you have probably heard about that one and all animals have it so what this means let's say for an example a zebra is just chilling out African plains, chewing grass suddenly a lion leaps out of a bush and the chase is on the zebra's body responds its sympathetic nervous system kicks into action pumping getting its heart pumping faster dumping a whole lot of blood into its core muscles to help it run chemicals like adrenaline and cortisol are also being dumped into his bloodstream its digestion is shut down its immune function is shut down so all that is happening so the zebra can survive now let's say the zebra does survive to eat grass for another day its parasympathetic nervous system suddenly kicks in and that cools everything down again and gives that zebra an opportunity to recalibrate and rest now this is called our natural resilience all mammals are able to do this respond and then rest in fact the root word of resilience in Latin means to jump again and the only way we can keep jumping is if we rest and I just think we've lost that ability to do that and mindfulness activates our relaxation response so not only do we have this fight and flight response in this busy world and all this technology we've also got another primitive part of our brain that is always pressing the panic button because it's looking for threat and seeing threat everywhere and that's useful for our ancestors you can understand if you think you're going to get eaten that it's helpful to look for threat but we still have this hardwired in us we're scanning subconsciously for threat constantly so we're more likely to see the negative I mean you know what it's like you go for a job interview you go for a performance review and you've got the 10 awesome things about how cool you are and then you get the one growth opportunity kind of piece of feedback and that's the only thing you can focus on and so our kind of panic button or our fight and flight response gets pressed all the time now and it could just be something like that flood of emails coming in that critical voice in our head in fact our brains cannot recognise the difference between external criticism and internal criticism so if you are constantly berating yourself then you're firing up that fight and flight system all the time doing damage to your health so it's good to know about these things right so that we can be aware of them and we can work with them we've got another part of our brain that has decided to kind of step up and help us out with this and it's a more modern part of the brain that's been developed more recently it's the executive functioning part of our brain and that gives us the cool ability to be able to think about stuff that we're not doing so we can operate an autopilot so that means that we can continuously be planning the future and evaluating the past just to make sure we're safe so you probably all have experienced autopilot you can drive home from work and pull into the driveway and actually just realise that you didn't see a thing on the way home that you're in a trance it's quite scary isn't it so that's autopilot so it's really really helpful but I actually think that we operate on autopilot too much of a time you can spend most of your day on autopilot if you allow yourself to live like that and once again I think we're missing out on those little opportunities of joy I'll give you a really small example and this gets me, still gets me now even though I've been practising mindfulness for five years it still gets me I'm a really fussy tea drinker I drink English breakfast teas anyone else in here really fussy tea drinker? so you're at a relate to this so when I make a cup of tea it has to be the perfect caramel colour the tea bag has to soak for three minutes and I have to use light blue milk it has to be piping hot so I spend a long time making my cup of tea just to make sure it's perfect and then I will sit down at my desk and I will put my tea cup down and I will get distracted by something on my computer and I will look down half an hour later and my cup is empty and I haven't tasted one drop and it seems so pointless and that's just a small example what about bigger examples? so I think that autopilot is being overused and in fact Killingsworth and his colleagues have even been able to prove that the more our minds wander the more unhappy we are and this is a really interesting piece of research and he had a sample of 12,000 participants in his survey he was able to figure out how much time our minds wander during the day so how much would you say guys how much do you reckon we spend thinking about something that we're not doing 10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 47% of the time we're thinking about something that we're not doing so pretty much half so let's say you're in your mid 30s now and you live to mid 80s that's 50 years that's 25 years of your life that you're actually not even conscious for it's quite scary when you think about it like that and if our lives are just one moment of experience followed by another moment of experience then what is it that we're missing out on so a pace of life about our technology the way we're using technology our overactive panic button and our wandering minds I think are all contributing to some quite kind of serious things that are happening for us and it's affecting our health did you know that the number one reason that people visit the doctor today is for stress related illness a quarter of us will be diagnosed with anxiety in our lifetime and the World Health Organization has said that by the year 2020 depression will be the second biggest health burden globally but it's not just the health stuff for me that stuff is really important but I think there's something bigger here as well it's about what we're missing out on so it's about that potential to lead and that opportunity to innovate to really connect with each other and to really use our strengths at work so I just feel like there's a real opportunity to use something like mindfulness to help us with dealing with our modern lives and our primitive brains so let's have a look at the research and discuss what the research is telling us around mindfulness now I'm sure some of you know this but this could just be a bit of a review but in terms of studying mindfulness in the western world it started around 35 years ago a professor called John Cabot Zinn who was also a microbiologist he was based in the University of Massachusetts in the States and he worked in the local hospital there now he was also a long time meditator and what he noticed is that so many patients were being discharged from hospital that still had ongoing symptoms or conditions from their illness so it could have been chronic pain ongoing stress or anxiety related to the illness and he wondered if he could do something about this so it was a story goes he went to his superiors and he said, come up some funding apparently he was given a room in the basement with no windows and told good luck anyway 10,000 patients later and thousands of clinical trials there has been a mass of evidence to show the benefits of his program I mean it's just fantastic that he was a scientist because him and his colleagues did some wonderful research over the last 35 years and this is just a handful of some of the areas that they have researched the benefits of mindfulness based stress reduction so that's that 8 week program I mentioned and a very similar version called mindfulness based cognitive therapy which has been proven very effective for anxiety and depression so it's not surprising really that there's been a massive influx in the interest of mindfulness based on this and it probably feels for some of you like a little bit of a fad because it's kind of all over the place at the moment and I get that but just come back to the research and the benefits of it if you are able to build up a mindfulness practice for yourselves so let's have a look actually one of the studies that was really interesting that I thought I'd share with you that John Kabatzen and his colleagues did was on psoriasis so that's a skin condition and they took two sample groups and they were both treated for psoriasis going into a light treatment room and one of the groups was given mindfulness meditation exercises to do and they both underwent treatment and the group that were given the mindfulness based meditation to do psoriasis healed significantly faster than the other group and when you can't argue with that there is definitely something going on there that is causing that difference and they believe it's linked to the increases in immunity through mindfulness practice so what about in organisations? To be fair, there's 35 years of research on clinical uses of mindfulness mindfulness in organisations is still in its infancy there's just not enough mass of evidence-based data yet to meet the same level of scrutiny as the clinical trials however, there is a really promising studies that have been done and a piece of research done last year they reviewed all the scientific evidence in organisations last year and they were able to say that there is a strong connection between mindfulness and these areas for organisations which is really promising so well-being that makes sense, right? if you can activate your parasympathetic nervous system if you can calm yourself down if you can tap into your own natural resilience you're going to improve your own well-being relationships so really interesting studies around mindfulness and emotional intelligence and cognitive bias performance so that makes sense, I guess if we're able to switch off autopilot and make better decisions and innovation so it's actually been proven that stressed-out minds shut down creativity which is why organisations like Google have those really playful office environments to keep people kind of effeting creative and not effeting the pressure from work so mindfulness helps to reduce stress and increases creativity and leadership which is really interesting so one study in particular on leadership showed the connection between the mindfulness trait mindfulness of leaders and the well-being and performance of their team and we're able to show that there's a link between increased mindfulness and increased well-being and performance so the research is really promising but you know what really got me if I'm honest is the brain science I think that's really cool so that's what I'm going to share with you next now neuroplasticity is a really fancy word that just means that our brains have the ability to rewire or to change and some bits can get bigger and some bits can get smaller and a really good example of this is juggling so neuroscientists took two groups of people they taught one group how to juggle and then they did a brain scan at the beginning and the end of the sample of the trial so MRI scan that was able to measure different sizes of different parts of the brain they were able to see a significant increase in the part of the brain to do with visual awareness so that's how we're able to change our brains what we're focusing our attention on so what about mindfulness then well there was a piece of research done by Sarah Lizard and her colleagues and she's a neuroscientist and she did the same thing so she took two groups measured scanned before and after one of the groups did an 8-week based mindfulness reduction program and they found some really interesting changes in the brain for example structures to do with perception emotional regulation and self-awareness and hippocampus had increased grey matter now people that suffer from depression or post-traumatic stress disorder actually have a shrunken hippocampus so growth in that area is a good thing it helps to regulate our emotion and really interestingly a decrease of grey matter in the amygdala now the amygdala is our panic button that is like the control centre where the panic button is being pushed constantly so a decreased amygdala is a good thing I promise you if a lion jumps out of a bush you'll still be able to run away even if you've got a decreased amygdala so that's a good thing we're not reacting to stress we're able to respond to stress what is mindfulness? I guess we haven't really covered that yet so now's a good opportunity to talk about what mindfulness is we'll simply put it's a particular way of paying attention in that way of paying attention is on purpose in the present moment non-judgmentally to everything that's in our field of awareness and by non-judgmentally all we mean is noticing our tendency to appraise or to criticise everything including ourselves and just bring some kindly awareness to that but I can I can tell you about mindfulness or I can show you and we can have a little get you a little bit familiar with what mindfulness exercise might look like so if you want to join in I'll take you through just a two minute little exercise to get you familiar if you're not already with mindfulness so if you want to join in all you have to do, you don't have to go sit on a hilltop in lotus position all you have to do is stay in your seat and if you want to you can lower your eyes close your eyes or lower your eyes and that just shuts out visual stimulation which makes it easier for your mind to settle so if you want to join in just encourage you to do that and turn your attention inwards and just get a sense of your whole body as you sit here perhaps noticing places where your feet make contact with the floor where the body makes contact with the chair just getting a sense of your whole body as you sit here now allowing your breath to become the centre of your attention aware of the sensations as the breath enters and leaves the body you might notice the sensations as the air enters and leaves the nostrils sensations in your chest and abdomen and if you find your mind pulling you away from the breath just noticing what it got caught up in and just gently escorting your attention back to the breath not trying to change the breath in any way not trying to control it just noticing what's here watching as best you can the entirety of an in-breath from beginning to end and the entirety of an out-breath from beginning to end just watching the sensations of the breath as best as you can as it enters and leaves the body and now when you're ready turn in your attention outward again and opening your eyes now some of you might hopefully feel a little bit settled after doing that short exercise and you're probably wondering why the breath is a point of focus and it's really nothing too special it's just that it's quite good to give the mind something to do because it likes to keep busy and the breath is quite a nice place to focus your attention on because it's always changing and it's portable so you can take your breath with you and use that as a point of focus if you find the breath doesn't work for you you can always think about your hands and your lap or your feet on the ground so it's just giving your mind something to focus on so no doubt some of you would have been curious about what your minds were getting up to as you were doing that exercise and did any of you feel like this was going on? as soon as you start to settle your mind suddenly thinking starts and unless you're all a very calm bunch no doubt your minds visited hundreds of places just over that short little exercise so what I'd like you to do is tell the person next to you what your mind got up to while you did that exercise where did your mind go? where did it visit? attention back again minds visited a load of places while we were doing that exercise to get your attention back again so you'll notice how busy our minds are and what they get up to and this is really critical to understand because it's not like you've got a thought police it's not like you've got to kind of judge yourself and go oh there's another thought oh I failed it's not like that every time you notice a thought acknowledge it and come back to the breath that's a moment of mindfulness it's like strengthening your muscles at the gym just think of it like that so you know you go to the gym you get biceps and your triceps and the more you go the bigger they get it's the same thing with our minds every time we're practicing doing that you are strengthening your muscles your mindfulness muscle and that is kind of really helpful to develop mindfulness is those opportunities to practice noticing that your mind has wandered and bringing it back again so the last thing I wanted to share with you was oh, right so if you keep practicing mindfulness meditation you'll start to notice benefits on three different levels and really simply put the first one is you'll start to notice that you can hold your attention for longer to things so you'll be able to not get so distracted by Facebook and stuff when you're at work and you'll be able to just be more aware and then there's more awareness so you'll be more aware of what's happening around you so that's two types of awareness you'll be more aware of what's happening around you so your context better understanding of the context of what's happening around you rather than flicking into autopilot and also better understanding of what's happening internally in your internal landscape the critical thinking and then the third level is how you act so you'll notice that you don't respond to stress we act to stress so much and you're able to interact with people differently and when you listen to people your mind's not wandering off do you know how awful it is to try to talk to someone and you can tell when they get the glaze over they might have wandered off and yet we do that all the time now because we've got that to-do list going in the back of our heads so really simply put those are the three different levels and if we want to get technical about it there's a term called metacognition which really just means you've got that higher level awareness of being able to watch as thoughts come and go, watch as feelings come and go without necessarily getting caught up in them come back from them but let's now talk about organisations and programs that they've implemented now no doubt actually some of the organisations in this room either looking at or have implemented mindfulness based programs so I'm just going to share with you some of the examples that I know of but it's been really interesting watching this journey of mindfulness meditation in the business world because 12 years or so ago I was working at the ANZ and everyone went on this cultural change program run by a consultancy called McKinsey's and we all went off and basically learnt how to meditate and a whole lot of stuff around mindfulness but mindfulness and meditation weren't mentioned once it was called the breakout mind which was pretty cool back then and it was a really successful program but clearly they just felt like they couldn't use the words meditation and mindfulness but I just don't think that they have that much of a PR problem anymore I think that because the science is so sound it's actually okay to say this is a mindfulness based resilience program or a mindfulness based emotional intelligence program so here are some examples of organisations who are just getting out there and doing it and that is just a handful now I'm going to share with you a Counties Manukau example an SAP example and a General Mills example however it's worth mentioning that the UK Parliament formed a working committee in 2015 to look at mindfulness interventions in the system in the UK in terms of prison, teacher education and business and they've written some really good white papers so if you go to the Mindful UK website you can download those and loads of the Parliament members have been through the NBSR program so they're really taking it seriously Auckland District Health Board I don't know if anyone here is from Auckland District Health Board so there's a wonderful psychologist Nadav who's running a mindfulness based resilience program with the mental health workers and he's about to publish his results so yeah, great news and a lot of you might have heard about the Google program it's really kind of well advertised called Search Inside Yourself which is a take on the old search engine functionality and theirs is a little bit of mindfulness a little bit of emotional intelligence and career development kind of put together so that's just a few of the those examples but let's talk about some of the ones I know better so Counties Manukau have got a mindfulness based resilience program that they run for their doctors, nurses and non-clinical staff and it runs over four weeks and it's two hours and it's on site and I'm really lucky to be one of the teachers that's been trained up to deliver the program but it's been running for about five years they just need more teachers and Joe Soldin and Diane May are leading that program and they are about to publish some results and the findings are really interesting they were able to show a reduction in stress a reduction in burnout and increase in resilience in their and even its based research that they've done and actually the way they've implemented it is really neat too because what they've done is they've created a real culture around mindfulness they're wanting to create a mindful culture so they've got things like mindful champions that start little grassroots initiatives in the business and they've got things like a meditation room they've got a newsletter that goes out they have drop-in clinics so they're really creating this kind of momentum around the program they were short for anyone in the HR profession they were shortlisted for an industry HR INZ award two years ago too under the wellness category second example I wanted to share with you is SAP so they're a global software company they've got 18,000 employees and that's Peter Bostelman and he's got the coolest job title he is SAP's head of mindfulness practice globally which I think is pretty cool and they have had 3,500 people through their mindfulness program and apparently there's 5000 people on the waiting list and their program is offered globally and they've also done some research they haven't published the actual numbers yet but they are able to significantly see an increase in employment and increase in leadership trust which must have been an important factor for them a decrease in absenteeism and a 200% return on investment so this is actually Peter at a TED talk that he gave at the end of last year so I can send you the link for the TED talk if you get in contact with me but one of the things he shares in his TED talk that's really interesting is he said that when he started to ask people about mindfulness and do you think we could do it at SAP he said the response was really interesting he was trying to get a sponsor senior vice executive to sponsor the program and he said everyone said to him look I think it's a great idea I'll come on your program but the culture is not really he said he heard that so many times he realised the culture was more really than people thought but I thought was a really interesting point so if you're sitting in the room tonight thinking oh I'm not sure maybe just start asking around because maybe your culture is more really than you think and the final example is spearheaded by this wonderful lady Janice Maturano and she's just incredible and General Mills have got a seven week based leadership and wellbeing program and they've got some incredible results published on the Mindful Leadership website so you can go and have a look at it but she was able to prove a 40% increase in questions related to employee engagement and an average of a 35% increase in questions to do around decision making for her sample group but her journey to develop this program was really interesting so she was the Vice President of General Council in the early 2000s and she was responsible partly responsible for a huge merger going through for General Mills she said she was working 18 hour days, 7 days a week and at the same time her mother who was really ill tragically passed away and then six months later she lost her father as well and she said she could get the deal through but when the deal went through there was no mental resilience left anyway it was about that time that a colleague gave her a flyer for one of John Kabat-Zinn's retreats and so she went on that and that was the turning point for her and because she was quite senior in General Mills she had a real opportunity to do something in the business and apparently now they've got programs right throughout General Mills right down to the factory floor involving some form of mindfulness based intervention. So what are the learnings from what I've seen in the research and the organisations that I've read about and learnt about and been working with around how you could go about doing this if you think this is something you might like to take into your organisation. A lot of the people that I researched talked about the importance of working with skeptics and how important it is to lead with the science so lead with the data with the neuroscience with the facts around the benefits of mindfulness. Other thing that's really important is don't necessarily focus on stress reduction but really paint a picture of increased potential so you're talking about things like increased emotional intelligence increased innovation, increased leadership that's the kind of language that really attracts people to programs. Create lasting change and this is something I'm really passionate about because I see a lot of introductory programs out there that don't necessarily help people to get the neurobiological emotional and behavioural changes that we know mindfulness is capable of and so shorter programs are great introductions but they can end up just being a little bit of a light touch so it's about creating lasting change so that's where programs that run over weeks or have drop-in clinics give people that opportunity to form a habit. Also the Mindful UK White Paper just put a bit of a cautionary note in there around teacher education and background and around teachers needing to really embody the practice but also to have completed 12 months or some kind of learning education pathway and I can send you some information on the White Paper if you're interested. The last point is around building community so Counties Manukau have done that really well it's creating an environment where people are supported to continue to practice mindfulness. So I've shared with you why I think it's important I've shared with you some of the research and some of the organisation kind of examples and I think just one last quote that I'll share with you before I wrap up is Peter Bostelman at the end of his TED Talk said it's not a case of if mindfulness will come to your organisation it's a case of when and if your organisation will be an early adopter and I feel that is really the point that we're at where we're just seeing a shift and acceptance for these kind of things Now if anyone is wanting some help get started even if you just want to email me and talk to me more about building up your own personal practice then please just get in contact with me I also am able to run in-house programs and if you need someone just to come in and talk to the skeptics and show them the research I'm happy to do that and the other thing I thought I'd mention is I don't normally run a lot of public courses but I am going to do a public NBSR course starting in April or May the dates aren't finalised yet and so what you might like to do is if you think your organisation is interested you could just send one or two delegates along just to have a look and suss it out and see if it's something that your organisation could be interested in so if you did want to find out the dates of that program there's just a sign out sheet on the way out and just pop your name down and when I'll finalise the dates I'll send them through to you That's pretty much it for me now Take questions OK, so the question was what's the length of program I might do in a medium-sized organisation It depends on the culture for example if it's geographically spread they'll encounter difficulties so are you trying to get something that goes over weeks so that can vary anything from an intensive with some drop-in clinics to say four weeks like Counties Manukau or some kind of ongoing practice so you can take the basic structure built by John Kabat-Zinn and keep the ingredients but you can play around with it a little bit so it just comes down to the organisation That's a good question so mindfulness meditation involves form of an informal practice so the formal practice thank you I'd actually forgotten to mention that so the formal practice is the meditation but not on the hilltop so there's different types of that so there is body awareness practices there is gentle stretching yoga and there is things like the breath awareness exercise that we did today and then there's also on the job I guess practices that you can do so for example Counties Manukau have got mindful minute stickers up and it's just for one minute they count how many times they're breathing in a minute so it's ten times and then every now and again they just remember to have a break and count ten breaths they've also got mindful hand washing stickers up so they wash their hands mindfully each time so there's informal and formal practice that you use just to strengthen your mindfulness muscle but even things like sitting in the car on the way home rather than doing the whole self-critical thing about all the stuff you haven't done you can just use that as an opportunity so you can turn your radio off and just notice the hands on the wheel feet on the ground look at what's happening around you notice the breath yeah I mean that's actually very common for people when they start meditating and so things like the time of day that you choose can be really helpful so if you're exhausted and it's the end of the day it's really hard to stay awake and also suggesting you don't lie down sitting in a chair and you will notice over time that you stop falling asleep less but if you do fall asleep and it's fine just kind of notice that sense of falling asleep and waking up again that's just part of the practice Thank you, I'm just interested do you find that some professions and some areas of industry are more receptive to mindfulness than others so I'm giving you an example of a construction company and often when you introduce concepts like this you know immediately triggers the skeptic in a whole number of people so I'm just interested the particular professions or particular techniques to allow you to engage professions that might be by the skeptic Yeah, I can appreciate where you're coming from I've not seen research that suggests that certain industries are more open to this than others I think what it would come down to is finding a way in your particular culture so what's the language that you need to be able to talk or use in order for people to see a benefit for it and I'm not saying you have to use the word mindfulness now maybe a word like resilience or something else is just an opportunity to start the journey and start to work with the skeptics Is daydreaming actually useful sometimes when you're rehearsing yourself for a difficult conversation Yeah, that's a really good point I forgot to mention that You're absolutely right, it's not like mind wandering or thinking about something other than you're doing is a bad thing and it's a really important point because mind wandering is often how creative thinking bubbles up but also how we can solve problems So it's just a case of doing it on purpose or being aware that that's what you're doing and it doesn't kind of cascade into other parts of your life Yeah


Today is the day we make Mr. McNubbins a proper costume. We got felt, googly eyes, and super glue. Should have gone with fabric glue probably. Okay, I think our first order of business is probably eye placement, then we can kinda figure out the nose and the mouth from there. There, there. Pink tongue, red tongue, I'm gonna say pink. It's super glue, so I better be sure. Let's try right there, yeah? So, look even, nose right there. Super glue is very sticky. Thanks, Captain Obvious. All right, he's coming along nicely, but I feel like we're gonna need some puppy dog ears. Yeah, what are you doing? Maybe right there? And now my nubbin is a proper sock puppet. I can become a sock puppet channel. What do you think, puppy McNubbins? I think that'd be a great idea. What am I doing with my life? Really, what am I doing?


Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantell, narrated by Simon Slater There are three kinds of scenes, one called the tragic, second the comic, third the satiric. The decorations are different and unlike each other in scheme. Tragic scenes are delineated with columns, pediments, statues, and other objects suited to kings. Satiric scenes exhibit private dwellings with balconies and views representing rows of windows after the manner of ordinary dwellings. Satiric scenes are decorated with trees, caverns, mountains, and other rustic objects delineated in landscape style. From Vitruvius de Architectura on the Theatre, 27 BC These be the names of the players, Felicity, Liberty, Measure, Magnificence, Fancy, Counterfeit Countenance, Crafty Conveyance, Cloaked Collusion, Courtly Abusion, Folly, Adversity, Poverty, Despair, Mischief, Good Hope, Redress, Circumspection, Perseverance. From John Skelton's Magnificence and Interlude, 1520 Part I, Chapter I, Across the Narrow Sea, Putney, 1500 So now get up! Fel, dazed, silent he has fallen, Knocked full length on the cobbles of the yard, His head turned sideways, His eyes are turned towards the gate, As if someone might arrive to help him out. One blow properly placed could kill him now. Blood from the gash on his head, Which was his father's first effort, His trickling across his face. Add to this his left eye is blinded, But if he squints sideways, With his right eye he can see that Stitching his father's boot is unraveling. The twine has sprung clear of the leather, And a hard knot in it has caught his eyebrow And opened another cut. So now get up! Walter is roaring down at him, Working out where to kick him next. He lifts his head an inch or two, And moves forward on his belly, Trying to do it without exposing his hands, On which Walter enjoys stamping. What are you, an eel? His parent asks. He trots backwards, gathers pace, And aims another kick. It knocks the last breath out of him. He thinks it may be his last. His forehead returns to the ground. He lies waiting for Walter to jump on him. The dog, Bella, is barking, Shut away in an outhouse. I'll miss my dog, he thinks. The odd smells of beer and blood. Someone is shouting down on the riverbank. Nothing hurts, or perhaps it's that everything hurts, Because there is no separate pain that he can pick out. But the cold strikes him just in one place, Just through the cheekbone as it rests on the cobbles. Look now, look now, Walter bellows. He hops on one foot as if he's dancing.  Inch by inch, inch by inch forward. Never mind if he calls you an eel, Or a worm, or a snake. Head down, don't provoke him. His nose is cluttered with blood, And he has to open his mouth to breathe. His father's momentary distraction At the loss of his good boot Allows him the leisure to vomit. That's right, Walter yells, spew everywhere. Spew everywhere on my good cobbles. Come on boy, get up, let's see you get up, By the blood of creeping Christ, Stand on your feet. Creeping Christ, he thinks. What does he mean?  He feels a sensation of movement, As if the filthy ground has become the Thames. It gives and sways beneath him, He lets out his breath, one great final gasp. You've done it this time, a voice tells Walter. But he closes his ears, Or God closes them for him. He's pulled downstream on a deep black tide. The next thing he knows it's almost noon, And he's propped in the doorway of Pegasus, the flying horse. The sister cat is coming from- Sample complete. Ready to continue?


Nanomedicine is a rapidly developing field with potential applications in many areas of healthcare. Nanomedicine uses nanoparticles and nanorobots to deliver drugs directly to lesions or targeted cells, allowing for increased drug concentrations and minimizing side effects. Additionally, nanomedicine can be used for monitoring disease progression, complementary diagnosis, and minimally invasive surgery. Major diseases such as cancer, diabetes, and cardiovascular disease are being studied and treated with nanomedicine techniques. This article was authored by Qing Song Zhao, Nua Qing, Xi'an Sun, and others.


I am Shelby Mathis, the small business ombudsman at the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission, and this is our third monthly webinar. Today's topic is going to be on cloth diapers. And as a disclaimer, I am a CPSC staff member and I've put together this presentation, so it may not reflect the views of the commission because we are an agency that's headed by five commissioners. So the agenda for today, I'm going to start out and I've tried to make this as practical as possible for those of you that are either manufacturing, importing, or selling cloth diapers. We're going to talk about labeling and testing requirements on those cloth diapers and what applies. Once you know what testing requirements apply to your product, we're going to talk about how to find a CPSC accepted testing lab, which is mandated because this is a children's product and the CPSIA requires that children's products be tested by CPSC accepted testing labs. So we're going to talk about how to find one of those. And then for those of you that are registered as a small batch manufacturer or may be considering registering as a small batch manufacturer, we'll talk about the benefits associated with that. First of all, how to qualify and then what the benefits may be. If you are a manufacturer or an importer of cloth diapers, although there's some caveats there for importers, much harder to qualify as a small batch manufacturer. So mainly focused on domestic manufacturers there. And then we'll do something that I hope that you guys find fun, which will be interactive audience polling, where I'm going to ask you a series of questions and then we're going to get feedback. You guys are going to guess the answers and we'll talk about what the actual answers are on several questions pertaining to cloth diapers. I'll talk about children's product certificates. We'll actually go through an example of a children's product certificate specific to cloth diapers and what information needs to go in what section. And then I'll highlight a children's apparel recall example that is not a cloth diaper, but it is a defect recall associated with children's apparel. And I'll talk about why it's a good example for this product at that time. I'll highlight some of the CPSC business resources that our office makes available to you guys and let you know where to find those resources. And then finally, we'll do a question and answer session at the end of the presentation. So first off, for labeling and testing requirements, let's take a look at labeling. Cloth diapers require tracking information because it's a children's product and tracking information needs to be permanently affixed to the product and the packaging. And we get a lot of questions in our office about what it means to have appropriate tracking information on your product and packaging. You want to make sure that four things are covered. The first thing is you want the manufacturer or private labeler name if it's being made domestically. If it's being made overseas or even to our northern neighbors or southern neighbors in North America, then you're going to want to put the importer name on the product and the packaging. You also need to make sure that the location and date of production of the product is included in your tracking information. And I will touch on some frequently asked questions right after this slide that will kind of highlight what that means in certain contexts. You want to also include the third piece of information, which is detailed info on the manufacturing process, which includes batch or run number information. If you use that in your manufacturing process, can be a very good way to isolate within your production line where there could be an issue associated with the product. And then finally, the fourth piece of information is any other info that's going to help a consumer ascertain the source of the product. Because that is the purpose of permanent tracking information. And one thing that I like to recommend here is the website for your business for two reasons. One, makes it a lot easier for a consumer that might be having an issue with a product that they've gotten from your company to get in touch with you. And then the second thing is, it's free advertising, right? If they like the product, they can see the website and go on to your website and order more products straight online. So there are frequently asked questions section on our website. And I've got the address there, cpsc.gov forward slash tracking label. Again, this appears as a hyperlink in the handout on the right hand side of your screen. In the PDF version of this presentation, it is actually a hyperlink that takes you right to the frequently asked questions slide. Sorry, the frequently asked questions page on our website. So with that being said, let's take a look at some of the frequently asked questions that we get on tracking information that might apply to the cloth diapers that you might be designing or manufacturing. So what meets the location of production requirement for permanent tracking information? Well, if it's being made domestically, city, state, and country of manufacturer, so where I'm physically standing today, I would say Bethesda, Maryland, USA. And that would meet the location of production requirement. If it's being made in another country, you want to put the province and the country.  Question we get frequently is, should an importer's name appear on the tracking label instead of the manufacturers? And the answer is yes. If the product is being manufactured outside the United States, the importer's name is going to need to take the place of the manufacturer's name on those four pieces of information on the tracking label. Another question that we get very frequently, do I need to test the tracking label and certify its compliance? And the answer here is no. However, the way that you decide to mark your consumer product cannot introduce lead into a children's product. So you want to be careful in the material that you choose if you're going to permanently affix a fabric tracking label. And then another frequent question. If you're using disposable packaging, does an adhesive label on disposable packaging meet the permanently affixed on packaging requirement? And the answer here is maybe. And it depends on how adhesive that label is. If this is a label that is actually going to stay on the disposable packaging, such that it reaches the consumer, then that is a permanently affixed label on packaging and would meet the requirement. However, if it's going to fall right off, that would not meet the requirement for permanently affixing a tracking label on packaging. So let's take a look at testing requirements. And I will try to highlight some of the questions that we get on Cloth Diaper specifically that kind of confuse it with other different types of consumer products. Because I think it'll help you guys figure out what applies to the products that you are working with. So the first thing, it's a children's product. So lead content and accessible components applies. And that is from Congress. That's 15 USC part 1278A. And the level there for lead content and accessible components is 100 ppm. For lead and paint and surface coatings. And this will be a coating that doesn't sink or I guess fully absorb into the substrate. That standard is 90 ppm or that limit. And that's from our regs. That's 16 CFR part 1303. So we've got the two types of lead testing that could apply to your cloth diapers depending on how they're constructed. The third thing is flammability testing. And there is a general wearing apparel flammability standard which is our reg 1610. And then there's one for vinyl plastic film much less applicable on cloth diapers although we do get some questions on accessible diaper inserts that might involve vinyl plastic film in that 1611. But apparel flammability standards do apply. Most likely it's gonna be 1610 that applies to your cloth diapers in terms of testing procedure and a note here. And this is here because a lot of questions come into our office related to whether or not cloth diapers are considered children's sleepwear. The answer is they are not. And the reason that we get that question is because children's sleepwear, as many of you know, is subject to a more stringent flammability standard also in our regulations which is 16 CFR, 1615, and 1616. So our agency does not consider cloth diapers as children's sleepwear. And the fourth bullet here is also based on a question that we frequently get is whether or not cloth diapers need to be tested for phthalates. As many of you know, toys and childcare articles that facilitate sleeping and eating are subject to phthalates limits. And the phthalates there can exceed more than 0.1%. There are six types of phthalates that either are temporarily banned pending a final rule from the commission or permanently banned in plasticized components. However, this does not apply to cloth diapers. They are not considered a childcare article that facilitates sleeping and eating and they're certainly not a children's toy. So no phthalates testing is required on cloth diapers. Once you have met all of your testing requirements, you'll wanna make sure that you properly certify that you've met these requirements and you do that through creating a children's product certificate. And we'll go through an example of that and hopefully you'll find that useful. I'll also refer you to some resources on our website. In terms of obligations of who needs to create a children's product certificate, it is importers and domestic manufacturers that are responsible for making sure that a CPC has been created and is in place to cover the cloth diapers that they may be importing or manufacturing. All right, let's take a little harder look at each of the testing requirements because there could be, depending on the type of material or the way that you are constructing your cloth diapers, there could be ways that you would be able to avoid testing in certain instances. So the first requirement that was on that bulleted list from the slide before was leg content testing from 15 USC 1278A. You remember the limit there is 100 PPM and accessible components. However, keep in mind that there is a pretty extensive list of materials that we know after years and years of testing within our agency that are not going to exceed the lead limit as long as they're in an untreated, unadulterated state. And those materials, I've highlighted some here and I'll go through those, are in 16 CFR 1500.91. And again, that's a hyperlink right to that regulation that is available on the PDF handout on the right-hand side of your screen. The reason I wanted to hyperlink the regulation for you is not so you can go and read regulations, which I know non-lawyers find really exhausting and no fun. It's because I've done my best here to highlight each of the materials that I think may apply to your cloth diapers, but that regulation has a pretty extensive list, the contents of which I could not list or I guess I could list, but it might be a little bit exhaustive for our purposes today. So if you're using a textile that's not on this list, check the regulation and see if it's there because if so, you might be able to avoid total leg content testing under 1278A. So what are the materials? The first one is wood paper and similar materials made from wood. We've had some questions about cloth diapers. I guess there are some innovations in the way of textiles that are being created from wood and paper-derived products. So those would fall under that exemption or likely would. You're welcome to reach out to us with specific questions on textiles that you might have. And then if we internally need to get a decision from our experts within our agency, we're happy to do that. But wood paper and similar materials made from wood are listed in 1500.91 as not requiring total leg content testing. Now the second bullet here is CMYK process printing inks. And why is this important? CMYK process printing inks fully absorb into the substrate. So they are listed as not requiring total leg content testing. And then natural fibers died or undied including but not limited to. And again, I've tried to highlight here a lot of the materials we get questions on but there's a much more extensive list online. Cotton, linen, hemp, bamboo, sisal, silk, and sheep's wool. And died or undied states as long as they are untreated. And then manufacturing or manufactured fibers also died or undied including but not limited to. Rayon, lyoscel, acetate, triacetate, rubber, polyester, nylon, acrylic, motor acrylic, and spandex. Additionally, I've added, this is based on agency guidance that we've received internally from our staff that Velcro and Aplix, which are two materials that are frequently used in cloth diapers, would be considered textiles that fall under 1500.91. It would not require total leg content testing. Also important to remember here, there are other components on your cloth diapers besides the fabric that you make them up.  And you need to look at each of the pieces and see whether or not different types of testing would apply based on how the pieces come together. So for zipper snaps and other fasteners that would be made of like a metal or a poly resin, you wanna make sure that those comply with the total lead limit on substrate. And then polyurethane laminate or pull, we get questions about frequently on cloth diapers, would not require testing if it's inaccessible. However, it's not on the list of 1500.91. So if it is accessible, it would require total leg content testing. Colorants may be a source of lead.  And depending on the types of inks and colorants that you're using to do so, they could be a source of lead that would require total leg content testing. And again, testing labs can very frequently help you determine whether or not leg content testing would be needed. You're also welcome to reach out to our office and we can forward internally to the experts here at the agency to help you figure out whether or not testing would apply. For lead in paint and surface coatings, this was the second bullet point on that four bullet point list that we talked about for testing requirements. This is straight from our reg. You remember for paint and surface coatings, the limit is 90 ppm. Unfortunately on paint and surface coatings, there's no exceptions and exemptions like we just talked about for total leg content. However, thing to remember here is that if you don't have paint or a surface coating, this is not going to apply to you. But what does it mean to be a surface coating? Well, surface coating is something that's applied to a substrate that does not absorb into the substrate, meaning it's sitting on the surface. So examples that we see here that require lead in paint and surface coatings testing in a cloth diaper context are frequently screen printed fabrics and then painted zippers and snaps. And with painted zippers and snaps, remember again with the puzzle piece method that they're gonna need total leg content testing for whatever the zipper and snap is made of and then lead in paints and surface coatings testing for the paint that's sitting on top of that snap. All right, the third requirement is flammability testing. Inflammability testing on general wearing apparel is in our regulations part 1610. That applies to all textiles that are used for adult and children's wearing apparel and cloth diapers are children's wearing apparel. This just of note, this flammability testing section does not apply to certain types of hats, gloves, footwear and inner lining fabrics. And then for children's sleepwear, that's gotta meet a more stringent standard. I just wanted to highlight that for those of you that might be making other type of apparel items and wondering whether or not the flammability testing of 1610 would apply to those items. So vinyl plastic film is the other flammability testing requirement. And again, very frequently applies here because vinyl plastic film really is a disposable diapers material. It would be unsupported vinyl plastic film that could be transparent, translucent and opaque, but it needs to be uncovered or exposed in wearing apparel to require flammability testing to 1611. Sometimes in vinyl cloth diaper inserts, if those are exposed, this would apply, but again, very limited circumstances. I just wanted to bring it to your attention though. So for flammability, there are some exemptions for flammability testing and those can be found in our regulation section 1610.1, section D. And the fabrics that do not require flammability testing are broken into two main categories. The first one is plain surface fabrics that exceed a certain weight. And that weight is 88.2 grams per square meter or 2.6 ounces per square yard, regardless of fiber content. So that's the first type of fabric or type of textile that could be exempted from flammability testing. And then the second group are plain and raised surface fabrics that are made of six materials or any combination of them regardless of weight. And those materials are acrylic, Moda acrylic, nylon, olefin, polyester and wool. So point to take away from the flammability testing exemptions and the list of materials that we know aren't gonna exceed the lead content or total lead content is when sourcing materials, if you would like to try to limit your obligation to test because that can sometimes add to the expense associated with or it always adds to the expense associated with getting a product to market, then if you are creative in sourcing your materials and you check 1500.91 for total lead content exceptions list and you check the flammability exemptions list and you manage to pick textiles that fall under both then you can avoid testing in certain circumstances. So flammability testing, I just wanted to highlight some of the things associated with it and how it works because we do get some questions about what does it mean to be different classes of fabric under flammability testing? So what flammability testing standards do is they classify the flammability of a textile into three classes and that's class one, two, three. And it's based on two main things which is the average burn time over several specimens or the speed that they burn and then the surface characteristics of the fabric and class three textiles are considered dangerously flammable and are not suitable for use in clothing because they rapidly and intensively burn. So this is just a picture of a sample being prepped at our testing lab and for flammability testing you'll want to have, and again this is all in 1610 and the testing procedure is outlined there. You'll wanna have a two by six inch specimen and you can see that attached to the plate there. It's held at a 45 degree angle. There's a 16 millimeter flame, a one second ignition. The ignition has to take place on the surface. The burn time is recorded. There's a prescribed sample prep on what you need to do before you put the sample on the plate and begin the burning process and then what you do afterwards and then refurbishing is required and refurbishing is laundering the textile and whatever way is gonna be prescribed for whoever's gonna wear it. So again, very complex the flammability testing procedure and it's outlined in 16 CFR 1610. So other things to keep in mind on children's clothing, small parts. Sometimes cloth diapers have small, potential small parts on them and you can see some examples of small parts. The toggle which I frankly have not seen on cloth diapers but could certainly exist and then you see buttons which I have seen on cloth diapers. So our cloth diaper examples. So things to keep in mind with things like those toggles or those buttons are that children's clothing and accessories are exempted from the small parts regulations. Many of you know small parts does apply to children's toys if they're intended for children under the age of three and many children's products if intended for children under the age of three. Certainly cloth diapers are. However, children's clothing and accessories are exempted from the small parts rags but you need to make sure those things are secure and I'll talk about a recall example on children's apparel and highlight why that's important but suffice to say for now that if buttons or toggles start falling off of your cloth diapers because they're poorly constructed or they're not properly attached then our agency could take a look at that based on a report or our own internal investigation and determine that that could be a product hazard. So if you are using toggles or buttons any kind of fastener that might be a fix to your cloth diapers you want to make sure that those are very secure and don't have the ability to be pulled off. All right, so I want to touch on the small batch manufacturer registration benefits because many people attending may qualify as a small batch manufacturer and one of the questions we frequently get is what are the benefits if I register? So at the outset I just want to say registration is not required at all by our agency however if you do register there are certain benefits so let's talk about those and we'll first start with what it takes to qualify as a small batch manufacturer. The qualifications in this calendar year you must meet two requirements and that's a gross revenue requirement and a limit on the amount of manufactured products that fall under your registration in a calendar year. So for gross revenue last calendar year you cannot have exceeded right under 1.1 million and that figures on your screen and you cannot have manufactured more than 7,500 units of the covered product that qualifies you as a small batch manufacturer. So in the context of cloth diapers what are the benefits of registering as a small batch manufacturer? The benefit is that registered eligible small batch manufacturers may be able to avoid third party testing at independent CPSC accepted labs for specific tests on children's products and one example is the flammability test for a general wearing apparel in 16 CFR part 1610. Now registered eligible small batch manufacturers can conduct first party testing or manufacturer testing in this context however you must make sure that you are strictly meeting the requirements of 1610 and it's sample prep and testing procedures which are extensive. If you are interested in this or you have specific questions please feel free to reach out to us and we're happy to seek guidance with the groups within our agency that have much more expertise on this than I do. You can find out more information on the benefits of small batch manufacturer registering on our website at cpsc.gov forward slash small batch and again it appears as a hyperlink on your screen. It's a hyperlink in the handout on the right hand side of your screen in the PDF version of this document. All right, I love charts as many people who know me know so I just wanted to give you guys a chart if you are a manufacturer of cloth diapers that you could have handy and it would be an easy reference for you. So things to keep in mind here. I've got the four potential types of testing that we talked about at the outset and then I've got three columns. The first one is is third party CPSC accepted lab testing required for each of these types of tests and we'll talk about that by test in just a second. The second of the columns on the right hand side is can written assurances from a supplier be relied upon by a registered small batch manufacturer? So for those of you attending today that are registered small batch manufacturers or you are eligible to register and you were considering whether or not you should register this will let you know the benefits associated with that. And then finally, could a domestic manufacturer rely on timely component part testing from a supplier to avoid retesting for each of these types of tests? So let's take a look at the left hand side and look at each of the types of testing and then we'll go right across each of the columns. So first one, total leg content which applies to accessible parts. Usually total leg content applies to the textiles that you use for your cloth diapers. It would also include polyurethane laminate and then the snaps and zippers that you use the substrate there, be it metal or poly resin. So third party CPSC accepted lab testing required? No on total leg content. Can you rely on written assurances if you're a registered small batch manufacturer? Yes. So what is a written assurance from your supplier? It is something on their letterhead that's certifying to you that the product that they're supplying you with complies with our leg content limit of 100 ppm. So that should be distinct in your mind from a testing report. But again, that is only eligible registered small batch manufacturers that can utilize written assurances on total leg content. And then also on the right hand side for total leg content, a domestic manufacturer can rely on component part testing from a supplier on total leg content for their textiles or their snaps and zippers. For lead and paint and surface coatings, you'll see that it's the flip of the leg content above it. You do need third party CPSC accepted lab testing. So if you have things like painted snaps or zippers or screen printing, you're gonna need to have that lab tested by a CPSC accepted testing lab. And we'll talk about how to find those in just a second. You cannot rely on a written assurance that the lead and paint and surface coatings does not exceed our 90 ppm limit if you're a registered small batch manufacturer. But if you get a testing report that is on the component part, be it the painted snap or zipper, that is from your supplier that's certifying to you that it's past the 90 ppm lead and paint and surface coatings limit, you can rely on that component part testing. For flammability on general wearing apparel under 1610, that does not require third party CPSC accepted lab testing. However, you can, as a registered small batch manufacturer, rely on a written assurance that the textile that they're supplying you with passes the apparel flammability testing. And you can also, as a domestic manufacturer, rely on timely component part testing. And what does it mean to be timely component part testing? We'll talk about that in a second, but it's usually a testing report that's within the past year and that you make sure test your actual product component. And then finally, for vinyl plastic film flammability testing as it might apply to diaper inserts that are exposed in some way. Again, very isolated application of 1611 and flammability testing here. You do not have to have that CPSC accepted third party lab tested. And you do have the ability to rely on written assurances if you're an eligible registered small batch manufacturer. And you can also rely on timely component part testing from your supplier of the vinyl plastic film. So we just talked about all the testing requirements. How do you find a testing lab? If you are required to use a CPSC accepted lab, you've got to find that CPSC accepted lab via our website. And I've got the site link there that is available in your handout at cpsc.gov forward slash lab search. You have the ability to narrow your search by region or by country and by scope, meaning the type of product testing that you need. And there is a lab search demo video available on our website. And I've got the hyperlink in your handout. We are working on the lab search page and we're trying to make it a little more user friendly. In the meantime, if you have questions feel free to reach out to us. We're happy to help you find a CPSC accepted testing lab for your cloth diapers and the lab search demo video can also probably help you figure out how to best use that website if you are doing this after hours or at a time when Will or myself are not available to help you on the phone. So testing frequency. There is a periodic testing rule. One of the questions that we hear a lot is how often do I have to get my cloth diapers tested? Well, the main answer is that a vast majority of manufacturers and importers need to make sure that they're testing their products once per year and that applies. That is the default. However, if you have a production testing plan and if you've got questions about that we can talk to you more in depth about what that means. You do have the ability with a production testing plan in place to test every two years. And I'll caveat that in just a second about material changes. Every three years requires that you have a testing lab accredited under that ISO standard. Very, very, very few manufacturers are going to qualify for every three-year testing. And the takeaway here, the vast majority, it's gonna be once per year. So testing requirements, what is the proper procedure? Manufacturers and importers need to submit the samples to the testing lab. And we get questions on that. We'll talk about that a little bit later in the webinar. The CPSC accepted testing lab receives your samples. They perform the applicable testing and then they provide you the testing results. Our recommendation to lower your cost, you wanna find one lab that can do all the testing that you need to have done. Labs are accredited or accepted by the CPSC on a test-by-test basis. So they may not be able to perform all the testing that you might need to have done on your product. So when looking for a testing lab you wanna make sure that they're accepted by us, especially in the case of children's products that they can test or conduct all the testing that you need to have done on your cloth diapers. And for importers, the testing needs to be completed before entry at the port or you distribute them in commerce. And you need to have proof of that ready to be provided. And I'll talk about that in a little bit more depth in just a second. So I said I would caveat the testing requirements a second ago when I talked about every two years with a production testing plan or once per year for the vast majority of manufacturers that changes if you make a material change to the design of your product. And what does it mean to be a material change? We get a lot of questions on that. And truly that is a case-by-case basis question that I can't give you a broad answer on but if you do have questions on whether or not something's a material change please feel free to reach out to myself or Will in our office and we can get guidance internally on whether or not what you've done is considered a material change that would necessitate retesting the effective component part or the entire product. You do have the option to do either one in most circumstances but again it's case-by-case. So we're happy to help you if you believe that you might have a material change on the design of your cloth diapers that could mean that you need to test more frequently than that 12 month window. Once that retesting on the component part of the entire product has happened after a material change you need to make sure that you issue a new children's product certificate and who's responsible for children's product certificates manufacturers or importers are responsible for making sure that a CPC is available based on passing test results. All right so I hope everybody is ready to go and excited about interactive audience polling. We're gonna see how well you've all been paying attention and I'm gonna, you know, hopefully you guys are gonna get all the answers right but let's just see how we do. So I'm gonna go ahead and put the first question up and that question hopefully is appearing on your screen and it is do reusable pocket diapers have to bear a permanent tracking label? And these are questions based on the ones that we get quite frequently in our office so let's see as a group how we do. All right and it looks like everybody has voted so I'm gonna go ahead and close the results and let's share and see what we as a group thought the results were on whether or not reusable pocket diapers need to bear a permanent tracking label and it looks like by and large we thought the answer was yes so let's see if we were right and good news we are correct. So here's what you guys need to keep in mind if we're talking about reusable pocket diapers that are sold in a set then the answer is yes. The reusable pocket diapers need permanent tracking information on them. So great job everybody that was just our warm up question so let's see how we do on the second question. Again these are based on real questions that we receive from manufacturers and importers of cloth diapers each day. So the question here is which lead limit applies to accessible polyurethane laminate in cloth diapers? Would it be the 100 ppm lead limit that applies to substrate lead or the 90 ppm lead limit for paint and surface coatings? And I'll give you guys just a few more seconds it looks like there's an overwhelming response. All right I'm gonna close the poll and let's see what we as a group thought the answer was on which lead limit applies to accessible polyurethane laminate and cloth diapers. And it looks like the group pretty overwhelmingly thinks that the answer is 100 ppm which applies to total lead content in substrates. Let's see if you guys were right and the answer is 100 ppm for lead in substrates. So the large majority of you guys were correct. Okay well you're doing great so far so let's see how you do on our third question about cloth diapers also frequently received from members of the public. All right the question here. Are cloth diapers considered children's sleepwear subject to the more stringent children's sleepwear flammability standard? Oh and people are answering very quickly. That's a good indicator because we get so many questions here because young children sleep frequently in cloth diapers so we get questions about whether or not it's considered children's sleepwear. So everybody voted so quickly that I would go ahead and close the poll and then we'll take a look at the results and see what we thought as a group on whether or not cloth diapers fall under the children's sleepwear flammability testing standards. And it looks like I haven't been able to stump you guys so far because a huge majority, 85% of you said that the answer was no. Let's take a look and see if you guys are right. And the answer is no. Cloth diapers are considered general wearing apparel so they are not subject to the more stringent children's sleepwear flammability standards. They are instead subject to the general wearing flammability standards of 1610. All right I got another question queued up for you guys. Let's see how you do on this one. And the question here is are cloth diapers subject to phthalates testing? Thank you to everybody who's participating. You guys you're on the ball and I'm watching the participation percentages go off the charts. All right so I'm gonna go ahead and close the poll here and let's see what the group thought in terms of whether or not cloth diapers would be subject to phthalates testing. And as a group you overwhelmingly thought that the answer was no that cloth diapers would not be subject to phthalates testing. Let's see if you were correct. You were correct. The answer is no. Phthalates testing applies only to children's toys and childcare articles that facilitate sleeping and eating. Our agency has put out guidance and it's available on our website. I'm happy to point you to those resources that childcare articles that facilitate sleeping and eating would include something like a baby bib, sippy cups and utensils and children's sleepwear as well. All right let's see how you do on the fifth question that I've got queued up for you. And the question here is are disposable diaper liners subject to the same testing requirements as cloth diapers? I will give you guys just a few more seconds to get your answer in before we close the poll. All right I'm gonna go ahead and close the poll and let's see what we as a group thought on whether or not disposable diaper liners were subject to the same testing requirements as cloth diapers. Looks like the large majority of you guys thought that the answers know that there are different requirements that apply to disposable diaper liners. Let's see if you were right and you guys were correct. The answer is no that diaper liners as with cloth diapers need to meet leg content requirements. So in that way disposable diaper liners and cloth diapers are the same in leg content requirements. However, on flammability they are different. Disposable diaper liners that are completely unexposed to the outside do not require flammability testing and that's per our regulation 16 CFR 1610 34. So that was a bit tricky because that's information that I didn't provide but you guys already knew the answer. So let's see how you do on question number six. And the question here is are cloth diapers subject to the small parts ban because they are intended for children under age three? And I'll give you guys just a few more seconds to get your answers in because this is trending not in a decisive fashion. All right, I'm gonna go ahead and close the poll and let's see what we as a group thought the answer was on whether or not cloth diapers are subject to the small parts ban because they're intended for children under three. You can see the group trends towards yes but we're close to evenly split. We're 60 40 on our percentages. Let's see if the folks that selected yes were correct. And the answer here is actually no. Cloth diapers are exempt from small parts testing and the small parts ban under 16 CFR 1501.3 D. However, because children's clothing and apparel which cloth diapers are do not require small parts testing and therefore there's no small parts ban on them. However, please keep in mind and this is the caveat from earlier that all snaps and buttons still need to be secure on those cloth diapers because you don't wanna be in a recall situation based on a product defect. So as a group we're doing great. We've got one more question and I'm gonna go ahead and queue up for you guys that is a little bit more specific that again is based on the types of questions that we have received from fellow manufacturers and importers of cloth diapers. All right, and the question that you guys are taking a look at is a manufacturer of cloth diapers where the diapers are made entirely of bamboo fiber and Velcro does let testing need to be conducted on those diapers. I'm gonna give you guys just a few more moments to get your question. I mean, your answer is to the question then. All right, and I'm gonna go ahead and close the poll because it looks like everybody's participated. So let's see what we as a group thought the answer was. Then we'll see whether or not we were right. So 72% thought the answer was no that cloth diapers made entirely of bamboo fiber and Velcro would not require lead content testing. So let's see whether or not you guys were correct. And the majority of you were correct. Those cloth diapers would not require lead content testing and that's pursuant to the list that we discussed earlier which is in 16 CFR 1500.91, specifically D7 that list unadulterated and untreated bamboo fiber and Velcro is included by our agency interpretation in 1500.91 in the list of materials that do not require total lead content testing based on years of testing by our agency things that we know will pass and will not exceed the substrate lead content level of 100 PPM. So thank you everybody for participating in the poll. Let's take a look at children's product certificates and what would go into children's product certificate that covers cloth diapers. There are seven pieces of information that need to be on a children's product certificate and we'll go through each one. Caveat here, this is for demonstrative purposes only so it might not include everything that applies to your cloth diaper based on design. Some of the things that are included here may not apply based on the design of your cloth diapers. So we're just using it for an example. And number one, you need to describe the product covered by the certificate. So that's gonna be a full description as best you can of the cloth diapers that you're manufacturing or importing. And number two, you're gonna cite to each CPSC safety rule to which you are certifying compliance and I've listed out there the four things that could apply that we've covered today, which is the two types of lead testing and the two different types of flammability testing. Again, keeping in mind vinyl plastic film only applies to uncovered and exposed vinyl plastic film. Large majority are gonna fall right under 1610 for clothing textile flammability testing. Number three, you need to make sure that you include your importer or domestic manufacturer contact information. Number four is the contact info for the person that maintains your testing records very frequently. That individual might not be within your organization, might be somebody outside, so include as much contact info as you possibly can to help our import staff and our compliance staff take a look at these certificates and get in touch with the right people for testing records. Number five, the date and place of manufacture of the good that this certificate is covering, in this case, your cloth diapers. Number six, the location of testing and the date of test on which the certification is based. However, if you are relying on a regulation, the two of which we've discussed today have to do with total leg content testing, the list of materials that would not require total leg content testing at 1500.91 or flammability testing exemptions in 1610.1D. If you are relying on those to not have to test your product, you wanna make sure that those citations are listed out in number six and six should parallel two in terms of the sections on your certificate and be as specific as you can in 1500.91 and 1610.1D on which portion of those exempted or accepted materials you are relying on. So if it's the weight of the fabric, put the weight of the fabric. If it's the content of the fabric, put the content of the fabric in number six. And then number seven is the contact info of the testing lab that you used. And again, you wanna provide as much information as you can. And lastly, I've got the asterisk at the top to remind you that if you are a registered small batch manufacturer, you wanna make sure to include your registration number on your children's product certificate. All right, important things to remember in children's product certificates. All children's products require them. That includes cloth diapers, manufacturers, and importers have to be the ones that are certifying in their CPC that the product that they're importing or manufacturing complies. And cpsc.gov forward slash CPC is our website for children's product certificates. And there are two samples on our website, which is hyperlinked in the handout on the right hand side of your screen. And those samples are for children's clothing, which you can absolutely use for your cloth diapers, or for a children's toy, if that's something that you're also manufacturing. And with children's product certificates, three main things to remember here. Those certificates need to accompany each shipment, and there are different ways of doing that. I'll talk about electronic certificates in just a second. A copy of the certificate needs to be furnished to each distributor or retailer of the product that you're working with. You do not have a requirement to provide it to the ultimate consumer. A copy of the certificate also needs to be available to our commission or representatives of our agency or customs and border protection upon request. And then finally, electronic certificates. Our commission has ruled that electronic certificates are absolutely fine, but those must be completed, or sorry, created. The certificate needs to be created no later than the time of shipment or first distribution within the United States. So it's not an after the fact thing where you can go in and create a certificate after the fact. All right, lastly, I'm just gonna highlight, a recall example, which is not on cloth diapers, but it is on children's apparel for a defect, because this could apply to cloth diapers. Many cloth diapers have snaps, just like this onesie does at the bottom. And you can see in terms of units, there were 479,000 of these onesies sold. The recall date here is August, 2015, and the problem was that the snaps weren't sufficiently affixed to the onesie, so they came off, and they were a small part that posed a choking hazard.  So you wanna make sure that you fully secure the snaps or closure items to the cloth diapers that you are manufacturing. All right, some consumer products, safety commission, business resources. I've got my contact information up there. You've got my email address, the telephone number that's there, 301-5047-M45 is our business line. It rings at both myself and my colleague, Will's desk. And we answer as long as we are sitting at our desk and not at a meeting or on another call. We do have a Twitter feed. If you would like to follow us on Twitter, we post information about things like this webinar or speaking engagements that we have or round tables that might be taking place and that we're gonna take part in. So if you wanna stay in touch with a small business office, that's the way to do that. I've got the lab search page on the left-hand side, which we discussed earlier. It's useful for helping you find a testing lab. Again, we're happy to help you do that. The desktop reference guide, which is useful and has all different types of consumer products and the testing and labeling requirements that apply to them. The link is there. And then the regulatory robot, which is an interactive bot that helps you figure out what requirements apply to your product based on asking you a series of interactive questions and generating a customized report at the end. All right, a few last things to point out and then I'll take a few last questions at the end. We have an agency YouTube channel now and there is a playlist that's specific for our webinar series, just like the one we've conducted here today. This is the third in our series. So the previous two are available on CPSC webinar series playlist online. And again, that link is in the PDF handout on the right-hand side of your screen. And then if you wanna stay up to date on the things that we hear at the Small Business Ombudsman's Office are working on, be it webinars or other things that might be going on with the commission, we tried to do a nice job at the end of each month to issue a newsletter so that you can keep track of commission activities that you might be able to submit a public comment on. And to sign up for that monthly newsletter, you can do so at cpsc.gov forward slash email. You enter your email address and you'll wanna make sure that you click Small Business Ombudsman updates. All right, well with that, it looks like time is up. I wanna make sure that we end on time. So thank you everyone for attendance and I'll see everybody next month. Thank you.


What's good y'all Chris from joshescasebreaks.com doing our first of three fillers for the 11 box football mixer This is 2022 Phoenix H2 1 box random team number one Just a quick heads up if you didn't know now You know $2,500 in break credit being given away and that 11 box mixer and all of its fillers are Involved in that promo. So I've got your right down here. We'll format it in a second But Michael kind of Sean you're already in that giveaway because of that Thanks to getting on number two on the site already as well Here isn't here those names one more time Michael down to Sean in our teams the Cardinals down to the Commanders at the very very end We'll randomize top five. We'll get into the 11 box mixer We'll throw the dice and randomized for the box six and five eleven times. Let's do it. Thanks y'all. Good luck one two three four five six seven eight nine ten and eleven eleven the final time For the box going to be Jason down to Bill 11 times for our teams one two three four five six seven eight nine ten and eleven eleven the final time Chiefs down to Chargers Even though it's a a box no trade window since this is just a filler and not all card ship in this break as well I feel like you can see how it all shook out Right here, so it's gonna be sec The way he walks and then the the jacket taking off Oh my god, it's incredible. It'll look like this my apologies So Nathan with the Cardinals kind of Steve with commanders pause there if you would like Well, let's get this printed. Let's get this rips Like I said, I've already got number two on the site right now Not all card ships. We need rookie some inserts. Hopefully we get a Head or two some nice color and maybe even a patch on it Just in the filler Wouldn't mind There's our H2 box Diego when do When you start back up at school if you don't mind me asking or have you already started Just do it. We've still got a handful Of should have spots left as well From our 11 box next year Couple more toys to go. All right, sorry Last week in July if I started if I started school last week in July, I'd be so unhappy First week of August though because I think my neighborhood I'm like a block away from an elementary and middle school. They started up Today, which sounds about right when We start Let's do it though. H2 box number one good luck. It'll be a lot of color here Our work east June who was signed Out of 50 Minnesota bikes gonna go to Raymond A week a week long fall break. We never we got these are the h2 exclusives by the way They're not numbered those sleeves on them a little bit Brennan IU purple 97 out of 99 We had Thanksgiving and Black Friday off and that's it. He did not have a fall break when I was in school that flamethrowers rogers Ryan Asamoa the second one more for the Vikings one more for ramms on the red 15 out of 150 Contour is Pat Tillman Back there CD lamb orange for 64 out of 75 on the Dallas We go to Jason doesn't bring her on the rookie rising It's not the word. I wish Also Wilson out of 125 Denver gonna go to Barry Cold strange one of my favorite jerseys in the league by the way 69 on the back with strange. Come on hard to beat That doesn't rid her rookie going to Nathan and the Falcons Christian Watson How about still on tables of james connor for the Cardinals 59 out of 99 Nathan you have the Cardinals as well One more Brian Asamoa the second 150 More for Raymond contours Joe burrow in there And a rogers on the h2. All right, there we go. That's the box, but Let's get to the fun stuff here. Let's switch screens one more time Let's grab our names from Nathan Down to Steve our last fresh dice in our last fresh list top five at the end of this randomizer We'll get it. Thanks again. Y'all. Good luck. Number two on the side right now five and four nine times one two three four five six seven eight and nine ninth and final time So six to 32 sad times, but you got a couple more chances number two on the site right now, like I said Number six going to be brian time of jose jr. Sad times, but happy times two and congrats to airy steven erin Nathan and brian brian does get in Number one top spot Put more happy than six. Let's grab that right here when you see Phoenix one for one I'd go for some fun right now Next to your name means you got that in this first filler. Thanks y'all number two on the site right now jassescasebrakes.com. Bye