Toys feature in more than half of EU alerts for products containing banned chemicals

Christmas shoppers are being warned to avoid plastic toys after they appeared in more than half of EU intergovernmental alerts for products containing banned chemicals this year.

In all, 290 of the 563 warnings sent out on the EU’s rapid alert system concerned toys with illegally high levels of toxins, most of which were plastic dolls, and all of which could be on sale on British high streets.

Nearly half of the slime and putty toys tested in a separate survey of UK stores last week overshot EU safety limits for boron, which can cause diarrhoea and vomiting and may impair fertility.

The European Environmental Bureau (EEB) warned governmental agencies were fighting a losing battle against what the UN calls a “silent pandemic” of toxic pollution.

The EEB’s chemicals policy manager, Tatiana Santos, said: “Manufacturers do not fear the law and government inspectors are outnumbered and outgunned.