Chemical & choking risks pose biggest danger to consumers from non-food products – new report

Risks from chemical substances and choking posed the greatest health hazards to consumers last year from non-food products, according to a new EU report.

The annual study on the Safety Gate system, which detects dangerous non-food products, said most of the dangers came from toys that contain excessive amounts of banned chemicals, as well as detachable parts that can cause asphyxiation. Cars with defective parts are also identified in the report.

E-commerce has become a challenge for the European authorities responsible for removing dangerous products from the market.

With easier access to online shops from all over the world, European consumers are also more vulnerable to risks.

But Didier Reynders, the European Commissioner in charge of consumer rights believes the mechanism for detecting defective products works.

“To be very clear, we have detected a lot of unsafe products last year, but we have seen it was possible for the main marketplaces to remove those products from their platform in less than two working days, very fast,” he said on Monday.

According to the report, out of all the products marked as unsafe 50% came from China, 22% from the European Economic Area and 28% from the rest of the world.