U.S. EPA orders Amazon, eBay to stop selling unsafe COVID-19 products: Bloomberg

[June 11, 2020]  (Reuters) - E-commerce companies Amazon Inc and eBay Inc have been instructed by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to stop selling unproven or unsafe disinfectants, including products falsely marketed as killing COVID-19, on their platforms, Bloomberg reported https://bloom.bg/3fcuLg5 on Thursday.

The EPA issued orders directing the companies to stop selling or distributing 70 products, including sprays, lanyards and other products touted as "preventing epidemics", the report said.

The companies are required to remove the products from their websites and to certify that they have done so, the report said.

"We are removing the products in question and are taking action against the bad actors who listed them," an Amazon spokesperson said in an email statement.

The company has developed specific tools for COVID-19 that scan product detail pages for any inaccurate claims that the company's initial filters may have missed, the spokesperson added.

The EPA and eBay did not immediately respond to emailed requests for comment from Reuters.

(Reporting by Sabahatjahan Contractor in Bengaluru; editing by Jason Neely)

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