Safety Management of Textile Products in the European Union and Estimation of its Efficiency. Part 2

Abstract

This paper presents the second part of an analysis aimed to show the reasons for which textiles are among the consumer products most commonly notified as dangerous on the EU market. In the first part, the authors performed a synthetic review of legal regulations regarding safety requirements for clothing and textile products and carried out an analysis of the RAPEX alert system database in order to identify the origin of textiles representing a serious risk and evaluate the activity of EU countries in reporting dangerous textiles in this system. In the present part, the authors have focused on the main threats posed by textiles and analysed the RAPEX notifications mainly in terms of the nature of risk the textiles pose. It was shown that the main sources of serious risks are cords, drawstrings and small accessories in children’s clothes, as well as chemical hazards, attributed mainly to the presence of dangerous aromatic amines and some heavy metals; they are the second most common risk category posed by these products.