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Why Kids' Hoodies Don't Have Drawstrings

Canadian rules ban hood and neck drawstrings on kids' hoodies up to size 12. What Health Canada and ASTM F1816 require, and where the rules stop.

Pick up a kid's hoodie in any Canadian shop this autumn and look at the hood. There's usually no cord. Sometimes there are two eyelets with nothing through them, or a short stub stitched flat at the sides. That isn't a cost cut or a design choice. It's the rules, and they've been in place for years.

It's also a question that comes up every October. Hand-me-downs come out of the bin, a younger sibling inherits an older one's hoodie, and somebody notices that the old one has a cord and the new one doesn't. Here's what the rules actually say, which sizes they cover, where they stop, and what to do with an older hoodie that still has its cord.

The short answer

Health Canada's notice on children's upper outerwear with drawstrings says children's upper outerwear in sizes newborn to 12 should not have drawstrings in the hood and neck area. It treats garments that don't follow the guidance as a danger to human health or safety, and says making, importing, advertising or selling them breaks paragraphs 7(a) and 8(a) of the Canada Consumer Product Safety Act.

Cords at the waist and hem aren't banned outright. In sizes 2T to 16 they're allowed, but only inside tight limits.

What the hazard actually is

There are two, and they sit at different ends of the garment.

A cord at the hood or neck can catch on a slide, a fence or anything else a child climbs past. Health Canada's recall notices put it plainly: drawstrings on children's upper outerwear "can become caught on playground equipment, fences, or other objects and result in strangulation."

A cord at the waist or hem is a different problem. It can snag on a vehicle as it pulls away. The standard behind the rules, ASTM F1816-18, Standard Safety Specification for Drawstrings on Children's Upper Outerwear, calls this the vehicular dragging hazard and says it's associated mainly with waist and bottom drawstrings.

The numbers are small and grim. Health Canada's danger assessment records 16 reported incidents in Canada between 1988 and 2010, and three of them were deaths. For the United States, the same assessment counts 38 incidents and 18 deaths between January 1985 and September 2009. The US Consumer Product Safety Commission's business guidance gives its own figure of 26 deaths and 73 non-fatal incidents linked to neck and hood drawstrings from January 1985 to June 2019.

The rules, size by size

Health Canada's guidance follows ASTM F1816-18 closely, with one difference at the small end.

  • Hood and neck, newborn to 12: no drawstrings. ASTM F1816 and the US rule start at 2T. Health Canada goes down to newborn because, in its words, "children younger than two years of age may also be at risk."
  • Waist and hem, 2T to 16: no more than 76.2 mm (3 in.) of cord outside the channel when the garment is stretched to its fullest width.
  • No toggles, knots or other attachments on the free ends of a waist or hem cord. Those are the parts that catch.
  • Bartacked: Health Canada asks that waist and hem cords be stitched through the cord and the channel, so the cord can't be pulled out to one side. The CPSC applies the same requirement wherever the cord is one continuous string.
  • Fully retractable cords are exempt. ASTM F1816 exempts drawstrings that pull themselves back into the garment completely after adjustment.

What counts as a drawstring matters here, and Health Canada defines it precisely:

A non-retractable cord, ribbon or tape of any material that passes through a channel, loop(s), eyelet(s) or something similar and functions to pull together parts of upper outerwear to adjust the size of the opening or provide for closure.

Two words in there do a lot of work. "Any material" means an elastic cord through a channel is still a drawstring. "Functions" is why belts and purely decorative cords sit outside the definition.

Where the rules stop

The rules cover children's sizes, and that edge is blurrier than it looks on a shop shelf.

The CPSC's FAQ sets out the equivalents: girls' and boys' Large counts as size 12, and Extra-Large counts as size 16. So a youth L hoodie is inside the hood rule, and a youth XL is inside the waist rule but not the hood rule. Under the size limits, sizes 14 and 16 can legally have hood cords.

Adult garments are outside the rules altogether. Nothing we read from Health Canada or the CPSC deals with an adult XS on a ten-year-old, which happens all the time. A grown-up's hoodie handed down to a smaller kid isn't covered, so the call falls to whoever's doing the dressing.

Decorative cords are the other grey area. They aren't drawstrings under the definition because they don't close anything. That's a legal line, not a tested finding that a long loose cord near the neck is harmless. We didn't find any test that settles that one either way.

What to do with an older hoodie that still has a cord

Health Canada's advice in its 2019 recall of several brands of children's outerwear was simple: "remove the drawstring from the children's upper outerwear to eliminate the hazard." On a heavy hoodie that takes about five minutes.

  1. Check the centre back of the hood. Many cords are stitched through there to stop them pulling out to one side. Unpick that stitch with a seam ripper, or snip the cord either side of it.
  2. Cut off any knot or aglet at one end, then pull the cord out from the other eyelet. Work it along in short pulls so the channel doesn't bunch.
  3. Do the same for any hem cord. If you'd rather keep a hem cord, the limit to aim for is 76.2 mm outside the channel at full stretch, with nothing on the ends.
  4. Keep the cord if the hoodie might go back to an adult later. Threading it back in is easy with a safety pin, and we've written up how to get a drawcord back into a hoodie.

Don't just shorten the cord and knot it. A knot on the end is one of the exact things the waist rule bans, and the hood rule allows no cord at all in those sizes.

If you're passing a hoodie on or putting it in a sale, take the cord out first. The guidance doesn't say anything specific about second-hand clothing, so taking it out is the simple choice.

Without a cord the hood sits a bit looser, but a heavy fabric and a snug fit do most of the job. On a full-zip, the zip closes the neck, and if the zip on a hand-me-down keeps coming apart, that's usually fixable.

Why adult hoodies still have cords

On an adult hoodie the cord does a real job. It pulls the hood in against a crosswind on a February walk and keeps it from blowing back. The hazards in Health Canada's assessment are about small children, playgrounds and vehicles, and the regulators drew their size lines with that in mind. Our hoodies are cut in adult sizes and carry a cord for that reason. If one of them ends up on a much smaller kid, the advice above applies just the same.

What the evidence doesn't settle

The later figures look better. For June 2011 to December 2022, Health Canada lists ten reports in Canada involving drawstrings on children's upper outerwear, and none reported a strangulation. Its US figures for April 2011 to June 2020 show the same: eight reports, no strangulations. That fits with the rules doing their job, but a count of reports can't prove cause on its own, and fewer incidents also means less data.

The size cut-offs are lines a regulator drew, not limits that someone measured. A child doesn't become safe with a hood cord the day they move from a 12 to a 14. The rules give manufacturers a clear line. Past it, use your own judgement.

Sources

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