Want China Times, Staff Reporter 2013-02-18
Elementary school pupils in Zhejiang province. (File photo/Xinhua) |
A clothing
company in Shanghai which supplies uniforms to local schools has repeatedly been
found using carcinogenic dyes, highlighting loopholes in the national standard
and monitoring system.
A batch of
winter uniforms produced by Shanghai Ouxia garment company were found to use a
dye containing aromatic amine, a chemical that can cause cancer and cause
irreversible harm to the human body, according to the Shanghai Municipal Bureau
of Quality and Technical Supervision. The 21 local schools who buy from the
company have stopped using the uniforms and sent samples to be tested. The
company has been shut down and is under investigation, according to the local
Oriental Morning Post.
The bureau
found that six of 22 batches of school uniforms available locally failed to
meet standards and have problems such as mislabeling, abnormal pH values, false
labeling of fiber content and insufficient user instructions.
Shanghai
Ouxia's clothes failed to meet standards for user instructions, labeling and pH
values in 2009, 2011 and 2012. The latest violation was uncovered in November.
However,
the owner of the company, surnamed Wang, produced a document indicating that a
1cm-wide black band on the uniform was the only part that contained a
carcinogenic substance, further adding that he did not send the 50 uniforms
that use the material for testing because they are only samples and not for
sale. He did not expect the small piece of fabric would be a problem. All the
50 uniforms have since been destroyed, according to the paper.
Clothing
factories in China do not need to meet any requirements to secure contracts to
supply school uniforms and quality supervision agencies in Shanghai have only a
limited time to only examine samples of uniforms since local garment
manufacturers only produce uniforms prior to the start of a semester. If a
manufacturer's products are found to be substandard, the company is referred to
the local technology monitoring department, which will order the firm to make
improvements to their products and submit them again for testing. If they pass
the second test, they are free to put their products back on the market.
The
Shanghai city government said it will introduce an online platform to inform
schools of the results of school uniform tests and tell local school to monitor
uniform quality and buy high-quality outfits from reputed manufacturers.
At present,
the only monitoring standard used by schools with regard to uniforms is price.
A set of summer and winter uniforms should cost from around 50-60 yuan
(US$8-$9) to 150 yuan (US$24), a tight budget for manufacturers which has led
many of them to resort to using substandard materials, the principal of a local
school told the Oriental Morning Post.
It is also
difficult for schools to monitor the quality of their uniforms sufficiently
since they do not have the required professional knowledge and there is no
existing standard for them to follow in choosing a supplier.
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