Asbestos found in children’s play sand sold in UK | Retail industry

https://www.theguardian.com/business/2026/jan/24/childrens-play-sand-hobbycraft-asbestos-removed-recall?CMP=fb_gu&utm_medium=Social&utm_source=Facebook

Posted by fuchsiamatter

7 Comments

  1. absurdsolitaire on

    Refused to issue a recall because they aren’t required to by EU law anymore. Nice.

  2. pantone13-0752 on

    This is following the recall of asbestos-continated children’s play sand in Australia and New Zealand in the autumn. Hobbycraft really should have checked that their products were clear after that. 

  3. >Hobbycraft said that no UK authority had warned of a risk and that there was no evidence of harm to customers.

    I expect they’ll check again in around 40 years then considering how long asbestosis takes to set in…

  4. > All the affected products are manufactured in China, where items containing less than 5% of asbestos can be labelled asbestos-free. UK law says that there is no safe limit for exposure to the mineral.

    Sorry, what? Free means 0%, not 4.9%. This is absolutely crazy.

  5. You know what is missing from this news article- any indication of how many asbestos fibres were found. Literally one or two fibres is fine, in my opinion.