BRITISH companies may have to spend hundreds of thousands of pounds testing the safety of common products such as salt, vinegar and bicarbonate of soda under legislation proposed by the European Commission.

New regulations on the safety of chemicals will require producers to conduct rigorous tests on at least 30,000 substances that have never been assessed before.

Salt (sodium chloride), vinegar (acetic acid), bicarbonate of soda, methylated spirits and perhaps even alcohol would have to be registered and licensed in similar fashion to pesticides and weedkillers.

“It could take in anything you can find in the cupboard at home that is based on a chemical,” David Taylor, of the Royal Society of Chemistry, said.

The draft rules from Brussels have alarmed scientists and the chemical