Periodical reminder the European Commission runs something called Safety Gate.
It's an easy way to find out whether that niche and/or dodgy thing you bought has been part of an official recall anywhere in the single market.
Apart of branded stuff where the manufacturer made a genuine error there's also the utter crap (often sold by Amazon, don't buy there) like the murderous brush cutter chainsaw attachments that keep popping up.
Smoke and carbon monoxide detectors pop up rather frequently btw. And even so most of the shitty ones probably fall through the cracks.
As usual the very large online retailers (Amazon, and the ones like Alibaba even more blatantly shitting on EU consumer rights and small companies) are a large vector for this.
When you go through the effort of installing these, just try to buy something from a reputable large brand that is somewhat widespread in your country.
Example: https://ec.europa.eu/safety-gate-alerts/screen/webReport/alertDetail/10098636?lang=en
Smoke-detector.
"The product is not sensitive enough to detect smoke."
Sold via Amazon, Wish, Shein, Alibaba, Aliexpress
Might be laughable but also there's a lot of people who now have these in their house. It kills people.
It's difficult to enforce stuff on Wish, Shein, Alibaba and Aliexpress (although the EU could / should make advertising these sites illegal) but fricking Amazon ships this shit from EU warehouses. It's infuriating they're never fined for this.
https://ec.europa.eu/safety-gate-alerts/screen/webReport/alertDetail/10093833?lang=en
I work for a company fixing stuff after calamities, often fires. The past years we've been to multiple sites where the smoke detectors did not trigger despite massive amounts of smoke.
This is not a thing that happened a decade ago.
Do me a favour and check the smoke and carbon monoxide detectors you have at home. When in doubt: replace them.
On the brush cutter chainsaw attachments. Now I hear you: you have an urgent craving, need even, to turn your brush cutter from a microplastic dispenser into a lean & mean dandelion cutting machine.
Don't despair: just buy a murder triangle or murder disk from a reputable manufacturer!
Key factor: it should be a one part item with a hole. Anything with bolted on parts or chain will eventually break and take out your neighbours cat, child or car mirror.
Pepijn
Grumpy Old Techie 🕊️