"Some products are more dangerous than they appear": the EU Safety Gate campaign. Image: European Commission.
The European Commission is running a campaign built on an unsettling image: a man whose shaving foam has turned into the face of a monster. The message is that some products are more dangerous than they appear, and it asks consumers to check, spot and report unsafe goods on Safety Gate, the EU's public alert system for dangerous products.
The figures behind the campaign are a record: 4,671 alerts in 2025, the highest since the system was created, with cosmetics accounting for more than a third. But the most frequent dangerous cosmetic hides nothing. Its banned ingredient is printed in the ingredient list. And inside Europe, the leading country of origin of dangerous products is Italy.
The full article explains how the European alert system works, why a fragrance banned in 2022 still fills its statistics, why Brazil has just banned the same ingredient, and what this means for anyone moving products between Europe and Brazil, in both directions.