Almost all prescription and over-the-counter (OTC) medications are required to be kept in child-resistant packaging (CRP). CRP is designed to be significantly difficult for children under the age of five to open within a reasonable timeframe while still being accessible to older adults. Adults over the age of 65 commonly struggle to open these containers and many choose to transfer the contents to non-CRP or leave the packages open all together. A new CRP was designed to reduce this struggle; it varied the amount of functional surface area (FSA) available to the user to grip. The novel CRP theoretically, can be “tuned” by changing the FSA available, impacting the torque individuals are able to exert.
A study was conducted by Christina Berels and other researchers in Dr. Bush’s lab to quantify the removal torque that adults over the age of 65 and children between the ages of four and six years old could generate on this new CRP. A custom hand-held torque test system was created and used to obtain torque data. All participants were tested using three variations of the novel CRP and a control closure with no child-resistant mechanism. Results suggest the new design has the potential to permit older adults to easily open containers while reducing access for children. This new cap system capitalized on a need to understand that a specific, limited region needs to be gripped for opening – and most children tended to just spin the outer cap without applying an isolated torque.
