While baby milk powder is smuggled into China from Hong Kong and around the world due to fears of tainted domestic products, a recent CCTV investigation showed another health hazard for children both in China and abroad. At Global Times, Chen Tian reports a lack of progress in the year since CCTV exposed use of toxic materials in Shantou’s toy industry, whose exports reached $1.6 billion last year:
In March 2012, CCTV reported that Shantou’s toy manufacturing industry was habitually using toxic materials to make its products. After a public outcry, the city’s deputy mayor apologized, and vowed to make fundamental quality improvements in the industry.
However, any improvement sparked by the television report was short-lived. A revisit from CCTV reporters found that local processing workshops are still providing toxic materials, such as medical waste made from plastics, to toy manufacturers.
[…] At the processing workshops, plastic materials and used medical devices, which are often found in garbage cans, are simply smashed, rinsed and dried, and then sold to toy producers. Sometimes the workshops even added ground-up stone in the materials to make it heavier, with the hope of making more money, CCTV reported Sunday.
[…] Toy retailers at a Chenghai district plastics city, a marketplace for the city’s retailers, told CCTV that quality certification can be easily printed on the toys without any inspection by governmental supervisory body.
Xinhua reported last month that students at 21 Shanghai schools had been warned not to wear their uniforms after one batch was found to contain carcinogenic dye.
