The Product Safety Act gives consumers the right to have only safe products placed on the market. A non-food product is considered safe if it presents no risk to the health and safety of consumers, provided it is used according to its instructions and normal usage.

In fact, it is the responsibility of the producer or importer of a product to provide consumers with information about how to use it and to provide adequate warnings about the risks involved if the product is not used according to instructions.

Furthermore, once producers and/or distributors become aware of any unsafe products, they must inform the Market Surveillance Directorate within the Malta Standards Authority, which is the entity responsible of the Product Safety Act.

Producers and distributors must clearly identify the product in question, the risks it poses and the information necessary to trace it. They must also inform the authorities of any measures taken to prevent further risks to consumers.

The Malta Standards Authority also carries out ad hoc inspections to detect any dangerous products that may have been placed on the market. It also investigates reports about possible dangerous products, and if such products are detected, the authority ensures that the dangerous product is removed from the market.

The Market Surveillance Directorate is also responsible to notify the European Commission about any dangerous products found on the Maltese market via the Rapex system.

Rapex is the EU rapid alert system for dangerous non-food consumer products, which ensures that information about dangerous products identified by the national authorities is quickly circulated between the national authorities themselves and the European Commission. This system of disseminating information aims to prevent or at least restrict the selling of identified dangerous products on the European market.

Malta plays a very active role in notifying Rapex of dangerous products. Last year the Market Surveillance Directorate notified Rapex of 14 dangerous products which had been placed on the Maltese market, and since last January it has made 16 such notifications.

Two of these notifications were placed on the Rapex system only a few days ago and both products concern novelty lighters. One of these lighters is in the form of a toaster and the other flashes a light when pressed to ignite. Moreover, the light of the latter stays on as long as the ignition is kept pressed.

Both products pose a risk of burns because their design is attractive to children. Furthermore, both products do not comply with the Commission Decision 2006/502/EC prohibiting the placing on the market of novelty lighters. In both cases the distributors of these lighters have voluntarily agreed to stop the sale of these items.

In collaboration with the Malta Standards Authority, this column will from now on publish the details of products found to be dangerous and notified on Rapex.

If consumers come across products that seem unsafe or they feel the products might pose a serious risk, they should first of all not buy these products and secondly they should report them to the Market Surveillance Directorate. The directorate can be contacted on 2395 2000. Its postal address is Evans Building, 2nd Floor, Merchants Street, Valletta. VLT 1179.

For further information look up the following websites: www.msa.org.mt/marketsurveillance/index.html, http://ec.europa.eu/con sumers/safety/rapex/index_en.htm.

Ms Vella is senior information officer, Consumer and Competition Department.