Food-imitating and child-appealing chemical consumer products, such as shower gels, shampoos, body lotions, soaps, liquid soaps and dish-washing liquids are common on the European market. These products resemble foodstuffs or are child-appealing due to their shape, colour, appearance, odour, consistence, packaging or other characteristics. In particular, food-imitating or child-appealing chemical consumer products may lead consumers and especially vulnerable people, such as children or elderly people, to ingest them. Be it because of their inherent toxicity properties, be it from other characteristics (viscosity, foaming potential, vomiting induction potential) ingestion of these products may pose a risk to the health of consumers.
The European Commissions Directorate General for Health and Consumers has requested the Scientific Committee on Consumer Safety (SCCS) to assess the potential risks related to such food-imitating or child-appealing chemical consumer products. The mandate for this assessment can be found here .
In line with its procedures for stakeholder dialogue, published on 15 September 2007, the European Commission's Health and Consumers Directorate-General is issuing a call for information on this subject.
Interested parties are invited to submit:
1) Scientific peer reviewed research papers, reviews and reports related to the following areas:
- Morbidity/Prevalence (numbers of accidents, amounts ingested, types of products morbidity) of ingestions and on the mortality/clinical sequelae (circumstances, effects and symptoms, severity, outcome) following ingestion of food imitating/child appealing chemical consumer products
- Information on the product inherent toxicity attributes that contributed to/caused the observed clinical picture
- Information on non-chemical product attributes (shape, colour, appearance, odour, consistence, packaging or other characteristics) that may contribute to the food confusing or child appealing effects resulting in ingestion
- Information/analyses on the behavioural aspects of sensitive sub-populations (children, elderly, disabled, blind etc) that may lead/contribute to ingestion
2) Other credible scientific information that may not be easily available and which is directly relevant to this issue.
Deadline for submission of information: 3 July 2009
All information is considered public unless otherwise stated by the provider. Guidelines for the submission of contributions, containing criteria for the call for information and guidance for submission can be found here and in the Stakeholder Dialogue Document .
Please include your details, organisation and e-mail address in the text of the message and specify "SCCS: food imitating products – call for information " in the subject line of your e-mail. The full body of your contribution as well as references should be attached as separate documents to the electronic message.
Contributions should be sent to the following mailbox: SANCO-FIP
ec [dot] europa [dot] eu
More information on SCCP and the other non-food Scientific Committees of the European Commission can be found here.