Consumer Health and Safety
Since 1997, RPA has been involved a number of key studies aimed at ensuring a high level of consumer safety across the UK and EU. Our team has a particularly good understanding of the risks to health and safety from consumer goods and services and the interactions between consumer protection, risk assessment and regulatory practice.
Key studies in this area include a recent report for the European Commission establishing a comparative inventory of approaches and methods used by surveillance and enforcement authorities for the assessment of the safety of consumer products covered by Directive 2001/95/EC on general product safety and the 1997 Report on the Optimisation of Consumer Safety for the UK Department of Trade and Industry.
Other studies undertaken in this area are often interlinked with other key areas of RPA’s work and exhibit the broadly multi-faceted approach required today in addressing issues involving consumer safety. These include studies assessing:
- flood risks to people (March 2006);
- risks from certain organotin compounds on targeted consumer applications (September 2005);
- best practices in fairgrounds and amusement parks (March 2005);
- the impact of the Toy Safety Directive on safety of toys (October 2004);
- human-related intangible impacts of flooding (August 2004);
- inedibles in food product packaging (September 2003); and
- substitutes to phthalates in toys and childcare articles (July 2000).
