▪︎ SDS
Safety Gate – EU Rapid Alert System: Ongoing Trend of Hazardous Chemicals in Consumer Products
More than half of the notifications in the Safety Gate EU Rapid Alert System (formerly RAPEX) deal with hazardous chemicals in consumer products. That’s the finding of the Safety Gate Report 2025, published by the European Commission in early March 2026.
In 2025, approximately 53% of reports concerned hazardous chemicals in consumer products.
Warnings trending upward
The information continues the trend of recent years that shows the rising number of warning notifications. About 4,671 warning notifications appeared in 2025, but 4,137 products were reported the year before. And the 3,412 notifications of 2023 nearly doubled the number from 2022.
Two key reasons
The increasing number of reports does not necessarily indicate that consumer products are becoming less safe overall. Rather, two factors are key. According to the EU, one reason is improved cooperation among the supervisory authorities of individual EU member states. In fact, increased enforcement efforts allow faster identification of dangerous products. Another reason is the booming online retail sector. Because more products are sold online – which are harder to monitor – sellers can circumvent regulations more easily. That’s why more unsafe products end up on the EU market.
Focus on three product categories
As was the case in previous years, the product categories most frequently cited were cosmetics, toys, and electrical appliances. They made up 63% of the warnings. The finding that most unsafe products originate from China and were purchased online is also not new.
Two-thirds of the warnings related to cosmetics concerned the synthetic fragrance 2-(4-tert-butylbenzyl)propionaldehyde (BMHCA). The substance was found in cosmetic products – even though the EU has banned it since March 2022. It has been shown to damage the reproductive system and cause skin sensitization. Regulatory authorities also found phthalates in plastic toys and other children’s products, as well as lead and short-chain chlorinated paraffins (SCCPs) in soldering materials and cables.
The authorities’ response
Authorities in individual countries took 5,794 follow-up actions, including immediate removal of products from the market. Because online commerce has long been identified as a weakness, calls for a reliable market surveillance system in the EU are growing more intense. For example, the consumer organization BEUC called on the European Commission to establish an EU market surveillance authority as part of the planned European Product Act – an idea that some industry groups support, although others remain skeptical.
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