The future for hazardous mixtures in the EU

An upcoming poison centres notification portal will offer an easy-to-use and secure way for industry to prepare and submit information, in a recently released harmonised format, to appointed bodies in different Member States. Here’s what you need to know to start preparing. 

Most citizens don’t think much about what the household bottles they keep under their kitchen sinks contain. They usually have shiny labels with phrases like Deep clean!,  Ultra power! or  Advanced cleaning! But if you are an importer or downstream user of mixtures, you know that behind these colourful descriptions, there are some rather potent chemicals hiding. They are efficient at cleaning or for other purposes, but they may also be misused and cause a poisoning incident.

If citizens are accidentally poisoned with hazardous mixtures, such as household chemicals, detergents or paints, they can call a national poison centre for emergency health advice. The poison centres in the EU receive more than 600 000 calls a year. About half of those incidents involve children and in more than 40 % of cases identifying the product is difficult.

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