Health Canada Gives Details on Four Enforcement Projects

Health Canada in December issued enforcement data in four areas:

• Toy Magnets: Mechanical testing of 20 products during 2019 and 2020 led to four voluntary recalls and one public advisory. The reason for the latter was that the responsible company was a retailer that had gone out of business. In all five cases, the products did not meet the magnetic force requirement under Canadian toy regulations.

 

• Children's Jewelry: Lead and cadmium content were the target of 36 product assessment during 2020-2021. There were six voluntary recalls. The agency cooperated with EU counterparts by informing them if problematic products were on their markets. This happened twice.

 

• Alcohol Fuel Products: Reviews in 2020-2021 sought flame-jetting faults – lack of flame mitigation devices and documentation. Three voluntary recalls and one compliance commitment followed assessments of 15 products. There also were three products deemed out-of-scope.

 

• Cosmetics: Labeling under Advance Notice of Importation rules was the target. Visual inspections of 99 products in 2020-2021 led to one recall, one stop-distribution action, and 31 compliance commitments.

Links to the reports are at bit.ly/32wIQoa. The agency includes this disclaimer with each:

"A systematic bias is applied during inspection and sampling. Products are not randomly selected but are chosen because they are deemed by the inspector to be more likely to not meet health and safety requirements due to characteristics that are observed. Due to this biased nature of sampling and the fact that sample sizes within [enforcement] projects are very small, the findings of [enforcement] projects are not intended to reflect overall market compliance unless otherwise stated. Note that these summary reports relate only to the product(s) actually tested and the specific criteria indicated. Testing by Health Canada does not represent approval or endorsement of the product(s)."