Child resistant packaging (CRP) is intended to restrict access of children aged 5 years or younger, but must not be too difficult for older adults to open. Over 70% of older adults use some form of medication, most of which are stored in CRP. The majority of commonly used CRPs require the user to grasp specific parts of the package or apply a specific amount of torque. Older adults, many of whom suffer from osteoarthritis of the upper limbs or other conditions, struggle to perform the fine motor skills required to open CRP. As a result, many adults choose to remove their medications from the CRP and place them in containers with fewer or no safety features. Medications are commonly stored in easy to reach locations, such as countertops or unlocked cabinets or purses, leaving children at a high risk of contact. Thus, there is a need for CRP that restricts children’s abilities, but mitigates the struggles of adults. The goals of this work were to develop a testing system capable of accurately measuring an individual's torque generation on a cylindrical closure (similar to that of a standard bottle cap), determine the range of torque both older adults and young children could apply to a standard bottle cap, and evaluate the effectiveness of a newly designed CRP to reduce the torque generation of children. The new CRP design functioned by reducing the amount of functional surface area (FSA) the user had to grasp and open a continuous thread closure. A custom hand-held measuring system was created and used to obtain torque data from 24 adults (65 years or older) and 25 children (between four and six years old). Three variations in FSA (20%, 50%, 80%) and a control closure were tested. It was found that the adults applied significantly more torque than the children did for all tested closures. Based on published ranges of required torque for cap opening, the older adults were able to apply at least the minimum torque required to open all FSA variations, whereas the kids were only able to open the control and marginally the 80% cap. Additionally, the largest differences in mean torque generation existed between the two groups for the 50% and 80% FSA variations. The new CRP design evaluated in this work was effective at restricting the access of children between four and six years old, while allowing older adults access to the package's contents. Optimization between 50% and 80% FSA would be ideal to create a truly child resistant and senior friendly CRP.
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