The mission of the Federal Environmental Inspection is to verify the compliance of enterprises and self-employed personsworkers with legal regulations on the placing on the market and use of products.
The aim of this check is to prevent the potentially harmful effects that these products may have for human health and/or the environment.
The legal basis of these interventions is the law on product standards (French version and Dutch version).
The fields of application for the law on product standards are determined and completed by a wide range of Belgian and European legislation.
The products controlled by the inspection service are numerous and varied. The list of these products continues to grow.
Example: multi-year campaigns on wood-burning stoves
In Belgium, heating appliances have been strictly regulated since 2010 in order to reduce fine particle and CO2 emissions and increase their efficiency.
The Federal Environmental Inspection of the FPS Public Health carries out controls in hypermarkets and specialist stores in order to ensure that the legislation is correctly applied.
Non-conform models, namely those that remit too many particles and/or CO and/or for which efficiency is not high enough are removed from the market.
Since 2017, more than 2,000 wood-burning stoves have been subject to controls.
After tests and measurements carried out in laboratories which have confirmed the low performance of the appliances, more than 15 different models of wood-burning stoves were withdrawn from the market. Further information on the models withdrawn from the market here in French and here in Dutch.