BIH: Are the products you use safe?

Nowadays, the market is flooded with a wide variety of products manufactured all over the world. Have you ever wondered how safe they really are?

For some products, detailed quality and safety requirements are mandated and checked before they hit the market (e.g., medicines). However, for most products, general safety requirements are set, or standards are defined that certain products must comply with. The responsibility for the safety of such products falls on manufacturers or distributors.

To ensure the safety of products on the market and their compliance with prescribed requirements, market surveillance is essential.

If non-compliance is found that renders a product unsafe, specific measures are imposed on the manufacturer or distributor to prevent dangerous products from reaching consumers.

In the European Union, a notification system for unsafe products on the market was established back in 2005 – RAPEX (The Rapid Alert System for Non-Food Products). Today, this system operates under the name Safety Gate. It covers consumer products (e.g., toys, electronic equipment, motor vehicles, cosmetics), as well as products intended for professional use.

Medicines and medical devices are not covered by this system, while a similar system exists for food products – RASFF (the Rapid Alert System for Food and Feed).

EU member states submit daily alerts to the Safety Gate system. These include information about the type of product identified as dangerous, a description of the risk, and the measures taken. These alerts are monitored by the relevant authorities in other countries, who can take appropriate action if they find the reported product in their market.

What does all this have to do with chemicals? Among the various types of risks reported, such as burns, electric shock, environmental risk, microbiological risk, etc., there is also chemical risk.

Products often appear on the market containing chemicals whose use in those products is prohibited or restricted by chemical regulations. Here are just a few examples:

• jewelry containing an unauthorized concentration of cadmium – not in compliance with the REACH regulation,
• glue containing an unauthorized amount of chloroform – not in compliance with the REACH regulation,
• a cleaning agent that is extremely acidic (pH < 1) and corrosive, but not properly labeled and packaged – not in compliance with the CLP regulation,
• a hand sanitizer that does not contain enough active substance (e.g., ethanol) to have effective biocidal action – not in compliance with the Biocidal Products Regulation.

Each year, more than 2,000 different dangerous products are reported through the Safety Gate. The European Commission publishes weekly reports on the latest alerts, which are publicly available. You can view them here, or subscribe to receive weekly reports via email.

You can search the reports by product category (e.g., chemical or cosmetic products), the country that submitted the notification, the country of origin of the product, type of risk, type of alert, and type of product user. This way, any consumer, even those outside the European Union, can stay informed about products found to be unsafe.

In Bosnia and Herzegovina, market surveillance is conducted by the Market Surveillance Agency of BiH. They regularly publish reports on unsafe products found on the BiH market on their website. The information provided is similar to that in the EU, but without the option to search by desired criteria.

Have you ever encountered unsafe products?