Where Europe's Dangerous Products Come From

The EU has an effective system in place to help keep consumers safe from dangerous products. Every day, product safety specialists, stakeholders, manufacturers, border officials and scientists from across the EU as well as in Iceland, Norway and Liechtenstein, share information to track down defective or dangerous products and remove them from the market. It is called the Rapid Alert System and last year, there were 2,201 alerts for dangerous non-food products, according to the European Commission. They were followed by 4,000 actions by authorities in other countries who helped take measures to stop the dangerous products from reaching consumers.

Between 2003 and 2016, there were 22,245 alerts with last year's total fitting in with the annual average. Last year, toys were the most notified product (29 percent), followed by motor vehicles (20 percent) and clothing (12 percent). Fidget spinners in particular caught the eye of European authorities with dangerous versions of the toy quickly tracked down and removed from circulation due to the alert system. China was mentioned most often in alerts last year, accounting for 52.4 percent of the total. A number of EU member states also produced dangerous products with Germany, France, the UK, Italy, Poland and Spain all responsible for introducing unsafe products.