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US, Aussie Officials Yank GHB-Producing Toys
theodp writes "Questioned about concerns over China-made toys, Toys 'R' Us CEO Jerry Storch predicted 'this will be the safest holiday season ever.' Oops. On the same day Storch's interview ran in Fortune, Toys 'R' Us joined other North American and Australian retailers to pull millions of Chinese-made toy bead sets from shelves after scientists found they contain a chemical that when ingested metabolizes into GHB, the date-rape drug gamma hydroxy butyrate. Two children in the US and three in Australia were hospitalized after swallowing the beads."
Forget the chemical they were coated with for a second. But how on earth does a toy for children, that has parts easily removed and very easily swallowed, get bought for children? (and notice how carefully I tried to word this, not trying to imply that the manufacturer approved the use of such toys for children (they may or may not have), but allowing for the possibility that the towy were marketed for a more adult demographic (8-12) and it was the parents' bad call to buy them for toddlers) Somebody is crazy here.
"The agriculture ministry is not in charge of Gundam" - Japanese ministry official.
I'll take good old metal Transformer toys that pinch your fingers and rip the skin off. I miss the 80's.
This sig isn't original enough, it's time to come up with something witty...
Kids are already tripping 24/7.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
Crackdown on unsafe toys, crackdown on "do not call" violators. Federal agencies are suddenly interested in doing their jobs after nearly seven years of sucking up to the very people they're supposed to be regulating?
Is some kind of election coming up next year, or something?
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
How will they dispose of these beads? Throw them in the dump and let the chemical seep into the groundwater?
I have this vision of an entire town of amnesiacs.
You know, I had a nice reply, but hen I read some of your other posts here on slashdot, and a few post elsewhere, I'll just sum up:
You have a 'no-fucking-clue' problem
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Mod up please. This is why the Chinese manufacturers are getting in trouble. They are substituting cheaper, UNSAFE alternatives into commonly produced goods and then sending them off. The sad part is, the number of injuries and deaths we see in the U.S. and other countries, is *nothing* compared to the the number injuries and death suffered by the Chinese consumer. Their quality assurance for manufacturing is just NOT THERE! http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/08/world/asia/08china.html?fta=y
It is funny though - they see stuff on tv and tell me they want it. I explain that the commercials basically lie to get them to spend their money. Last year at Christmas time they bought some Floam and it was complete crap. And they learned. We saw an ad for aquadots a while back and my 4 year old says "I want that" and I asked his sisters - "What do you guys think?" and they said, "It's not like they show. They just want our money." Turns out to have come in extra handy this go round.
It's hard to believe that's how Micronians are made. Why don't we see it right now by having you both kiss one another?
"Child seriously ill after drinking Chinese-made drain cleaner!"
Seriously, what kind of kid eats non-edible beads when they are 10 years old? This seems like a case of Darwinism at work... Are people just supposed to be able to be as dumb as they want, do anything, disregard all common sense, and still somehow make it through life? Geez...
And yes, I have kids. My three year old is smart enough to not eat his older sister's toy beads. He is even smart enough to keep them away from a baby. I guess now that qualifies as "super genius".
No matter what the product, Chinese manufacturers will always cut every corner they can.
Toothpaste: Substituting poisonous glycol (anti-freeze) for other sugary chemicals
Cough syrup: Ditto
Paint: Using lead
Painted toys: lead
Capacitors: Using stolen formulas and producing incomplete electrolytes taht cause the capacitors to fail, leak or explode.
Toys: substituting cheaper butanediol (which turns into the date-rape drug GHB) for more expensive pentanediol
If I wasn't at work I'd look up the citation, but apparently double-blind studies have pretty conclusively shown that ruffies aren't really useful as a "date rape" drug, seeing as they're not a magical knockout potion.
Now, getting trashed out of your mind, that'll give yer frat boy an opening. Doesn't need a magical additive for that, though.
The company I work for buys metal goods from China. Every item is specified to the last detail and it should simply be case of "make me those". Unfortunately, many Chinese companies have a taste of our money and want more of it, so they will do anything to shave the cost without telling the customer. The items we buy are safety critical and we have to test the hell out of them because we catch the suppliers time after time using sub-standard steel because they can get it cheaper. China is probably becoming wealthy faster than any country in the world ever has and many companies and individuals there are a little too greedy for more.
More difficult than it sounds, and it would all be SO much simpler if China actually had a justice system worth a damn. As it is right now a company has a VERY hard time getting sued - every judge gets bribed, and there's more loyalty from them towards domestic businesses than seemingly hostile foreign influences. Their whole judiciary is a gigantic joke, the concept of rule of law does not apply in that country, except when the ruling party wants to apply it towards their own ends.
Even if a company is successfully sued, the way their system works allows the same group of people to simply close up shop, move a few blocks down, and continue from where they left off. It's practically impossible for any PERSONAL responsibility to be exacted unless the situation erupts into a full-scale international debacle (like this one), where the government will actually step in.
And if you think we have it bad, imagine the Chinese consumer. They don't just get to deal with shady manufacturers, but shady designs in the first place! Few people fully realize the intricacy and importance of proper engineering until it bites them in the ass like this. Welcome America, to the Wal Mart future you created for yourself by being a bunch of damn cheap bastards who would rather buy cheap shit than pay for quality and durability.
The chinese replaced the original glue with another, why? The chinese for some reason seem unable to follow specifications. All the recalls I seen from China are because they changed a part of the design for no good reason.
It's funny; back around the 1900s or so when the US was just getting ramped up with lots of production and exports and world trade, there were all sorts of abominations just like this - well, really, fewer polymers, and more sawdust-in-your-flour, fingers-in-your-sausage, and stuff like that.Then manufacturers sprung up who could make a profit off their reputation for quality, and Industry generally cleaned up their act quite a bit.
This stuff is typical of developing economies.
The World Wide Web is dying. Soon, we shall have only the Internet.
A better question is: did they even care?
There seem to be an awful lot of such incidents lately, involving swapped materials, ranging from poisonous toys to ethilene glycol in toothpaste to exploding lithium ion batteries, all coming from China. I'm sorry, but that's no longer looking like isolated "oopsie" cases where someone forgot to do their research. It starts to look like they have a whole culture based on not doing that research at all, or plain old not care as long as they can pocket the difference.
I mean in this case one might even argue that they didn't research what it decomposes into, but other cases involved such blatant cases as:
- lead paint, which is _known_ to be toxic. You don't have to research what it metabolizes into, it's just toxic as it is.
- ethilene glycol, a known poison, used instead of the more expensive glycerine in toothpaste
- the membrane which should collapse and open the circuit when a battery overheats, replaced with much cheaper stuff that doesn't. It doesn't take that much research to understand why it's there, and why a battery without that safety can burst into flames.
Etc.
In fact, I'll venture a guess and say what it really reminds me of: corruption and kleptocracy. Now I don't have any first-hand experience with China, but I've seen cases in other places, and, honestly, the more I hear about such Chinese manufacturing incidents, the more it starts to sounds like that.
The way that works is, sorta, along the lines of "it doesn't matter how much you're paid, it matters how much you can steal / embezzle / demand in bribes / etc". Whole pyramids get built where any good job (judged through the aforementioned criterion) is either given to relatives of party officials, or essentially auctioned to whoever gave a bigger bribe. Then essentially the winner is inoffficially _expected_ to get that money back with interest, by abusing that function to take more bribes or plain old steal.
In which case, the way it would go, isn't even that some ruthless capitalist wanted to cut production costs, gain a competitive advantage and invest it in some form or shape into expanding his operations. It's probably just some private guy along the chains who switched materials and pocketed the money. It's not the evils of capitalism, it's plain old the evils of unchecked corruption.
Especially the communist block generated quite a few such structures, which is why I wonder about China.
Actually, I'll give you one more reason why I worry about China. Because they have a whole _surrealistic_ history of just that.
If you look as far back in time as the Battle of the Yalu River, you'll find such surrealistic stuff as that many shells used by the Chinese fleet were filled with sawdust or cement, because some enterprising souls in the navy had embezzeled the funds for cordite and split the loot with the manufacturer. Or stuff as monumentally surrealistic as that a battleship was missing two main guns, which again had been stolen and sold on the black market. If you didn't go "WTBF?!" already, read it again and roll it a bit in your head. Big Fucking Guns, off a battleship, stolen and sold on the black market.
At this point, I'm sure someone will point out that it's been more than a century since then, and China did have two (or arguably even 3) changes of regime and direction in the meantime. But did the culture change in that time? Because from where I stand, it doesn't look that way. The corruption of the Qing empire continued seamlessly into the surrealistic warlord era during Chiang Kai-shek's regime, which in turn continued seamlessly into the corrupt regime under Mao. And now we have arguably the same guys who enriched themselves during the communism, and not by honest means either (the official salaries of government offi
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
Look, there are some things in life, that you simply do not question!!
Women exposing themselves for cheap plastic beads, are a good thing, and should be encouraged and enjoyed, but, NEVER, questioned!!
Hehehe..that being said, Mardi Gras is early this year....c'mon down for a visit and a party to our city!!
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
"Welcome America, to the Wal Mart future you created for yourself by being a bunch of damn cheap bastards who would rather buy cheap shit than pay for some fatass union worker to collect $20/hour for making crap."
Fixed that for ya'.
Obviously you weren't around during the 70's and 80's. American companies couldn't manufacture their way out of a paper bag. The bulk of american products were crap, with some really high quality stuff thrown in. The chinese just replaced the shitty end of the market. The high quality end either still exists, or was driven out when they couldn't cut costs to something folks could remotely afford.
I was just looking for a floor jack. I can get one made in China for $50, or the USA for $250. How could I justify the extra $200? I could buy 5 chinese jacks for the 1 american, and I doubt someone could convince me that the American one would last 5x as long. If it was $100 vs. $50, I would have bit the bullet, but 5x?!
Yes, american quality has improved greatly; but there is an entire generation that Detroit et al. lost in terms of "Buy American". If someone has been conditioned that a car made in Japan or Europe is inherently better, why would there be a stigma against China?
"As God is my witness, I thought turkeys could fly." A. Carlson
Hey, guess what - I have a degree in Mechanical Engineering. I studied manufacturing techniques, too. And part of your assertions about American quality are semantic sleight-of-hand.
"The American jack will also be made of superior materials, and is probably rated to a higher specification."
Not really. A rating is a rating. If the grade of steel is A36, that's what it is. True, the Chinese have been purposely substituting lesser materials an passing them off as better - it's called counterfeiting and fraud, and has nothing to do with "manufacturing" quality.
"Even if the box reads the same specification, you can bet your ass that the American jack has left a lot more of a margin, and won't collapse when overloaded by 10%."
Ahh, here's the subtle part. You see, one of the reasons that american stuff is so expensive, especially in the low-tech area, is that US manufacturer's of these items STILL have not learned the lessons of Deming and the Japanese. Their manufacturing operations still have just as shitty manufacturing controls as in the 70's. So how does the end product end up with "a lot more of a margin"? Because, in order to compensate for the bad process control, US manufacturer's have higher reject rates and overdesign the parts to compensate for the likelihood that they will be flawed. They siply shift the quality bell curve up, not narrow the standard deviation. The Chinese don't bother.
So, if I buy an American floor jack rated at 3 tons, it's actualls designed for 5 tons, but the factory QA is so bad that, statistically, they can only be sure of a 3 ton rating. Whereas the Chinese are designing for 3 ton, and selling at that rating.
"AHA!" you say, "Proof that American is better quality!"
"But", I reply, "I only WANT a 3 ton rated jack. I don't want to pay for a possibly defective 5 ton jack. Oh, I'll probably (statistically speaking) get lucky and get a jack with a real 5 ton load rating, but I don't NEED it - I'm jacking up VW's, not F350's. And I'm not getting a 5 ton jack for a 3 ton price - I'm getting a 5 ton jack for a 5 ton price, but the factory isn't confident enough to call it that!
I just want to buy simple stuff at a reasonable price. And that price should not include
1) Subsidizing some guy who barely graduated high school expecting to be paid premium wages just because he is in a union and/or an American.
2) Insane labor and environmental regulations which only enrich lawyers and don't do dick-all for the folks they purport to protect.
3) government bailouts to protect failed businesses, who are free to keep screwing up for the next 30 years (I'm looking at you, Iacocca)
I'm willing to have it include:
a) Fair wages for the LOCAL wage market in which the item is produced.
b) Reasonable regulations
c) reasonable legal overhead for protection agains real legal problems, and not just a wealth transfer to JD's
"As God is my witness, I thought turkeys could fly." A. Carlson