Enforcement 2/23: Tillsyn av desinfektionsmedel

This report describes an enforcement project in which the Swedish Chemicals Agency has checked companies that sold hand and surface disinfectants on the Swedish market during 2021. The report is aimed at companies, authorities and consumers.

Due to the pandemic outbreak in 2020, the number of disinfectants increased on the Swedish market. The Swedish Chemicals Agency also received an increased number of complaints about suspected non compliances in disinfectants. During 2020, The Swedish Chemicals Agency conducted a project that showed a high number of non-compliances in disinfectants. This project, conducted during 2021 is a follow-up to that project.

In this project we controlled the content in disinfectants as well as labelling. We controlled a total of 89 hand and surface disinfectants from 68 companies. On 42 of the products a chemical analysis was performed.

• For 20 (48 percent) of the 42 analysed disinfectants the concentration of active substance was in compliance with declared content on the label or other product information.
• Only one product contained an illegal active substance.
• One third of the controlled companies had not registered their company to the Swedish Chemical Agency´s Products Register.
• Many of the products had deficiencies in the labelling. For those products where tactile warning labelling were relevant, this was missing for 23 (44 percent) of the products.

At 27 (40 percent) of the controlled companies, such non-compliances were found that there was an environmental sanction charge or a notification of suspected crime linked to the non-compliance. It is at a similar level compared to the project 2020.

Compared to results from 2020, we have found fewer illegal products. There were fewer products with illegal substances and no products containing methanol were detected in the chemical analysis.