Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:

To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, what steps he is taking to ensure that harmful chemical products are not used in disposable and reusable period products.

Period products are regulated under the General Product Safety Regulations 2005 which require that only safe products are placed on the market. Producers are responsible for the safety of the products they place on the market and have to provide relevant information and adequate warnings so that that the risks can be assessed.

Both the French Agency for Food, Environmental and Occupational Health and Safety and the Swedish Chemical Agency have carried out studies that have considered the safety of these products. Both studies concluded that the risks were low.

If there were significant concerns about the presence of hazardous substances in a product, then there are measures in the UK REACH legislation, such as a UK REACH restriction, that could be taken to address this. However, we would need to be convinced that there was clear evidence before considering such action.