Fewer than one out of every 10 Maltese consumers know what chemical hazard warnings are about and the majority cannot even identify the safety symbols, a Eurobarometer study shows.
Research on chemical hazard pictograms on certain products carried out last year found that only six per cent of respondents could name all four images that flag potential harm.
Malta had the lowest score among all EU member states in terms of recognition. It got close to the EU average only when identifying the flame symbol. This is used to warn consumers that the product contains ingredients that make it highly flammable.
More than nine out of every 10 respondents were aware of the symbol.
However, respondents struggled to identify the other pictograms, those denoting an environmental hazard, a serious health hazard and exclamation point symbol to identify skin irritants.
The study found that 71 per cent of respondents in Malta gave the correct meaning for the environmental hazard pictogram, the lowest rate across Europe.
Just over half of the respondents, 55 per cent, could identify the serious health hazard pictogram and only 12 per cent knew what the symbol warning that a product is a skin irritant meant. These figures are well below the EU average.
The Eurobarometer research also found that, in the case of all four symbols, respondents from Malta were the most likely to admit they did not know what they stood for.
The four pictograms featured in the study were introduced together with five others as part of the EU’s Regulation on the Classification, Labelling and Packaging of Substances and Mixtures, which entered into force in 2009.
It also emerged that respondents in Malta were most likely to not read the safety instructions on labels if they saw one of the pictograms, with only 40 per cent claiming they did, the lowest across Europe.
However, Malta had one of the highest proportions of respondents saying they read the safety instructions on the product label and then tried to find more information from other sources (30 per cent) along with Luxembourg (32 per cent).
Respondents were also most likely to say they use the product just as they would any other in Malta. The same as in Lithuania (19 per cent).
The study was conducted in the last two months of 2016.