Products Sold in Online Violates of EU Chemical Laws

In the latest project of ECHA’s Enforcement Forum, enforcement authorities found that most inspected products sold online were non-compliant with at least one requirement under relevant EU chemicals legislation being checked. The inspections resulted in more than 5,000 enforcement actions.

As per regulations {like REACH, the Classification, Labelling and Packaging (CLP), and the Biocidal Products (BPR), they have been inspected for nearly 6,000 products.

As per REACH inspections have been based on restricted chemicals and found that 78 % of analyzed products were non-compliant. The products included both professional and consumer products and articles including, for example, textiles, leather, childcare articles, toys, and jewellery.

Nearly 2,600 products were analyzed against requirements for restricted substances and more than 1,800 were carcinogenic, mutagenic, or reprotoxic substances (CMRs), such as lead in solders for welding needs and boric acid. Professional users’ products should only be containing restricted CMRs. However, 99 % of the inspected products that contained CMRs were available for consumers to buy online and other non-compliances were found for phthalates in toys and cadmium in jewellery.

As per CLP regulation, non-compliances were related to a lack of information on the hazards of the chemical product in the online advertisement. In 75 % of inspections, the information was missing and for those where it was available, it was often not visible

As per BPR regulation, nearly 77 % of inspected biocidal products were found to be non-compliant with at least one requirement under the BPR. Repellents and Attractants (79 %) have the highest rate of non-compliance products. Most identified non-compliances were for products sold to the public. Also, 17 % of inspected products violated the BPR because they had false statements in the advertisements such as “low-risk biocidal product”, “non-toxic”, “harmless”, “natural”, “environmentally friendly”, or “animal friendly”.

Now actively, they are asking the companies to remove the product offer from their websites or bring their advertisements into compliance. Also, the rate of non-compliance was higher for marketplaces than for webshops. ECHA urges all actors to proactively improve consumer protection for online sales

Reference: https://echa.europa.eu/