EU authorities ban dozens of LED products over safety issues

[Andrew Gabriel]

[The Natural Philosopher]

how convenient that only two items were made in Germany.....

It is of course rampant protectionism. 'Elfin Safety' is used as an anti competitive tool routinely in Europe.

[Martin Brown]

Be fair. German engineering is generally pretty good.

Not too surprising that some retrofit designs have inadequate heatsinking and so fail in new and interesting ways.

Not always. There have been a couple of recent examples of Chinese copies of phone charger complete with CE approval markings with potentially lethal voltage on the output.

ISTR someone killed by one not that long ago.

Apple really knows how to capitalise on a scare story.

I have seen some pretty silly designs of ultra cheap power LED torch that do risk failure by unlimited current short circuit (limited only by the internal resistance of the battery). Most of them are OK though.

Even a humble AA can source >10A into a dead short for a while before it explodes. Any thin wires do get red hot rather quickly too.

[Java Jive]

"Finland, for instance, which benefits from a relatively robust market surveillance regime, spotted more than a third of the dangerous LED products dealt with in the whole of Europe ? even though the country is home to barely one per cent of the EU?s population.

...

Most were made in China, although two were made in Germany."

So most of the products were from China, and were found by Finland, and far from there being a pro-German bias, two of the banned products were actually from Germany.

No rati> > >

> >

[Graham.]

The fiendish Finnish might be double bluffing ;-)

[Joerg Niggemeyer]

Thank you for this link !

If there is no real quality control and the cheapest price is just the main issue it's no wonder.....

I have developed based on microcontroler a PWM method which uses the LED itself as the temp sensor for protection and safety. Because I don't know yet if for this method there is maybe a market I appreciate that link very much :-)

Regards

Joerg

[Dave Liquorice]

That thought went through my mind as well but it looks like the affected products are only in specific countries rather than EU wide (though I find that surprising). It also depends on how far down the chain they got, if they never made it to sale then there is little point in a list for "consumers"