Blog sprinkles

“The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks”

Phila of Bouphonia's Friday Hope blog... never late.

The Republican party no longer is mainstream.

First rule of infidelity: Don't piss off the wife by asking permission to visit the soul mate mistress.

Buy Chinese products!



Contemplating the choices if we get another Republican governor of California....

Politicians appeal to the teenager mind?

The importance of growing and eating local crops.

JJ of Unrepentant Old Hippie found this Chris Matthews video interview between a rabid anti-gays in military and a gay ex-soldier:



So you know just who is preventing the government from functioning... and thinking it's great fun:

Sen. Richard Shelby (R-AL) has put an extraordinary "blanket hold" on at least 70 nominations President Obama has sent to the Senate, CongressDaily (sub. req.) reports. The hold means no nominations can move forward unless Senate Democrats can secure a 60-member cloture vote to break it, or until Shelby lifts the hold.

"While holds are frequent," CongressDaily reports, "Senate aides said a blanket hold represents a far more aggressive use of the power than is normal."

The party of 'Country First' my ass.

Toxic homes

BERKELEY — Women with higher blood levels of PBDEs, a type of flame retardant commonly found in household consumer products, took longer to become pregnant compared with women who have lower levels of PBDEs, according to a new study by researchers at the University of California, Berkeley.

The study, to be published Jan. 26 in the journal Environmental Health Perspectives, found that each 10-fold increase in the blood concentration of four PBDE chemicals was linked to a 30 percent decrease in the odds of becoming pregnant each month.

Sign the petition:

Dear FDA Administrator Jackson,

A UC Berkeley study recently revealed that women with high levels of Polybrominated diphenyl ether flame retardants in their blood were 30-50 percent less likely to become pregnant than those women with lower levels.

This is a troubling and dangerous statistic. I am aware that the current PBDE that is being used will not be phased out until 2013, and I believe that is too far away. However, I am more concerned that the chemicals that are replacing PBDEs are just as unknown to us, as are their affects on the human body. If these chemicals are going to be replacing PBDEs in order to meet fire safety standards, then it is critical that these chemicals undergo rigorous testing as to their affects on human health.

It is incredibly disconcerting to find out that products are extremely dangerous many years after having those products in my home. Please ensure that any chemicals released for public use are properly tested.

Thank you for your time.

Respectfully,

[Your Name]

Toxic kids

An email from the Sierra Club:

Did you know that babies are being born with more than 300 industrial chemicals in their bodies, many associated with diseases from childhood cancer to birth defects, infertility and learning deficits?

America's toxic chemical safety law fails to protect the most vulnerable in society, kids. It assumes that chemicals are safe and relies on the government to identify dangerous chemicals among the 80,000 on the market. That hasn't worked. Instead, the burden should be on chemical manufacturers to prove that chemicals are safe for infants and children before they enter the marketplace.

California Senator Barbara Boxer has long supported the Kids-Safe Chemicals Act, which will make many important changes to chemical safety law to protect children. Urge her to keep up the good work and pass the bill.

As Chair of the Senate's Environment Committee, Senator Boxer is in a key position to pass legislation to protect kids’ health from toxic chemicals in our food, air and water. The Kids-Safe Chemical Act would put the burden on chemical manufacturers to test chemicals' health effects thoroughly before marketing them, guarantee the public’s right to know about health and safety data, and give the EPA clear authority to ban or restrict chemicals.

Senator Boxer has long been a leader in advocating protection of childrens' health. Urge her to pass the Kids-Safe Chemical Act ASAP.

Thanks for taking action to protect our children's future.

Greg Haegele
Director of Conservation

After all the bad press, the poisonous food and the deadly toys....

Here we go again... and again and again.... Now China is producing defective and smelly drywall:

(CNN) -- Officials are looking into claims that Chinese-made drywall installed in some Florida homes is emitting smelly, corrosive gases and ruining household systems such as air conditioners, the Consumer Product Safety Commission says.

The Florida Health Department, which is investigating whether the drywall poses any health risks, said it has received more than 140 homeowner complaints. And class-action lawsuits allege defective drywall has caused problems in at least three states -- Florida, Louisiana and Alabama -- while some attorneys involved claim such drywall may have been used in tens of thousands of U.S. homes.

Homeowners' lawsuits contend the drywall has caused them to suffer health problems such as headaches and sore throats and face huge repair expenses.

The drywall is alleged to have high levels of sulfur and, according to homeowners' complaints, the sulfur-based gases smell of rotten eggs and corrode piping and wiring, causing electronics and appliances to fail.

"It's economically devastating, and it's emotionally devastating," said Florida attorney Ervin A. Gonzalez, who filed one of the lawsuits. It would cost a third of an affected home's value to fix the dwelling, Gonzalez said.

"The interior has to be gutted, the homeowners have to continue paying mortgages, and they have to pay for a [temporary] place to live," Gonzalez said.

Apparently they aren't going learn any time soon that producing deadly products kills people and pisses off the ones that live. I put back on the shelf almost everything I can that has 'Made in China' stamped on it.

The safety of our food and medicine

This sounds so strange. How many times in the last eight years did toxic products reach our tables and our toy chests and we were told the FDA just didn't have enough people/labs/time/money to deal with it?

Well, that will change.

Thank YOU, Mr. President!

A kiss is just a kiss

Unless it has the flavor of toxic lead...



Amy Goodman of Truthdig: (my bold)

Is your lipstick laden with lead? Is your baby’s bottle toxic? The American Chemistry Council assures us that “we make the products that help keep you safe and healthy.” But U.S. consumers are actually exposed to a vast array of harmful chemicals and additives embedded in toys, cosmetics, plastic water bottles and countless other products. U.S. chemical and manufacturing industries have fought regulation, while Europe moves ahead with strict prohibitions against the most harmful toxins. The European Union says regulation is good for business, inspiring consumer confidence and saving money over the long term.

Most people would be surprised to learn that the cosmetics industry in the United States is largely unregulated. Investigative journalist Mark Schapiro is the author of “Exposed: The Toxic Chemistry of Everyday Products and What’s at Stake for American Power.” In the absence of oversight, researchers and journalists like Schapiro and grass-roots organizations have stepped into the breach.

Schapiro told me, “Whether it is your nail polish, eye shadow, shampoo, essentially personal-care products [are] not regulated by the [Food and Drug Administration]. ... Numerous times in the Senate, over the last 50 years, there have been efforts to expand the purview of the FDA, and it’s been repeatedly beaten back by the cosmetics industry.” Details on the toxins are hard to come by. Schapiro continued, “The reason I even know what kind of material is in cosmetics is not because the FDA has told us; it’s actually because the European Union has taken the action to remove that stuff, and they have a list.”

The Campaign for Safe Cosmetics lists numerous toxins that appear regularly in cosmetics and personal-care products, among them lead and phthalates. Phthalates are linked to birth defects, including disruption of genital development in boys, decreased sperm counts and infertility. Lead appears in lipstick and hundreds of other products. The CSC reports that “lead ... is a proven neurotoxin—linked to learning, language and behavioral problems ... miscarriage, reduced fertility in both men and women, hormonal changes, menstrual irregularities and delays in puberty onset in girls.” This is the stuff women and girls are putting on their lips all day, licking it off and reapplying.

The European Union, with 27 member nations representing almost half a billion people, is asserting itself on issues of toxins, using serious economic muscle. Stavros Dimas, European Union commissioner for environment, explained the long-term benefits of regulation: “The medical expenses for chemical-related diseases will be less. Medicines will not be needed. We will not lose working hours, and productivity will be better. So the overall benefits will by far outweigh costs to the industry.”

Interestingly, because European countries pay a far larger share of their citizens’ health-care costs than does the U.S., they want to keep costs down and they expect to save upward of $50 billion in coming decades, says Schapiro, as a result of the improved health and environmental conditions brought about by stricter chemical regulations.

In the wake of the 2007 China toy recall in the U.S. (because of lead found in the toys), Congress passed, and President George W. Bush signed, the Consumer Product Safety Improvement Act. A key provision, mandating a ban of phthalate- and lead-containing products intended for children 12 years of age and younger, went into effect Feb. 10. If you bought a plastic toy before that date, beware: After the law passed last summer, some stores stuffed their shelves with tainted toys and sold them at fire-sale prices to unload their inventory.

Safe alternatives for toys, cosmetics, shampoos and other products are becoming increasingly available as demand for organic products grows. The difference between market forces limiting toxins and a law doing it, Schapiro says, is “if you have a law, it makes it far more equitable, because everybody gets the same protections, whether you have the resources or the knowledge to pursue the alternatives.”

That is where the EU comes in, with its expansive and world-leading regulatory system in place (called “REACH,” for Registration, Evaluation, Authorization and restriction of CHemical substances). Schapiro notes, “The European-led revolution in chemical regulation requires that thousands of chemicals finally be assessed for their potentially toxic effects on human beings and signals the end of American industry’s ability to withhold critical data from the public.”

Tough regulations on toxins are not only essential to saving lives; they also make good business sense. The U.S. now has an opportunity to catch up to our European partners—and make changes that are more than just cosmetic.

Americans are fat and overindulged. High fructose corn syrup is in everything. We get (new and improved! more for less!) products thrown at us constantly. We are urged to impulse buy. Spend more, don't think, don't get up, just order online! Yet we've been fed utter crap. The food and toys we buy have toxic chemicals, our beef has mad cow disease, our spinach has e-coli, our rice arsenic. Yet we are told to ignore that, buy more buy more, our country and the world depends on us to buy more...

Do we really need cheap heaps of stuff? Do we really need the latest greatest thing?

Know something corporations do not want you to know. Every time an addict shakes his addiction, someone loses money. So let's start buying less and emphasize quality over quantity.

Once you involve money, then the corporations will listen.


*edited for clarity... and because my grammar is really atrocious...

Instead of pets, now they are killing babies.

Greed does not have a learning curve, apparently:

BEIJING -- China’s Ministry of Health on Monday announced that two babies have died in recent months and 1,253 others have been sickened by contaminated milk powder in a rapidly expanding food safety scandal that became public last week.

More than 340 infants remain hospitalized, including 53 in serious condition.

Meanwhile, inspection teams are visiting dairy farms and processing centers in the country’s four main milk-producing provinces to insure that producers are not violating safety standards.

Authorities have confirmed that the tainted milk powder was laced with melamine, a chemical additive sometimes used to make plastics and fertilizer. Last year, a contaminated pet food scare in the United States was traced to Chinese animal feed that had been blended with melamine.

This is not the first time they have poisoned children with milk.

Tell me again why on earth we are buying ANYTHING from China? Lead, date rape drugs, melamine, you name it, it's been jammed into our food and other products we buy from China.

We want it cheap, but it will be toxic. Take your pick from these products:

Keeping track of the other incidences:

poisonous baby clothing,
toys,
cub scout patches,
food poisoning of school children,
hydrogen explosions in school,
toxic seafood and pork....

Update: How could I forget about the poisoning pet food with melamine?
And toothpaste?
And cough syrup?

Adding to this list:

Asbestos
Fake Kosher
Insecticide
Formaldehyde in baby clothes

I told you guys their attempts to self-regulate would last only two minutes.

The moral of this story is

Know what you are selling, where the ingredients come from, and if some of them are from China, test your product for pollutants, toxins, and chemicals:

LOS ANGELES — Criminal charges have been filed against a company that prosecutors say imported and distributed nearly 90,000 tubes of Chinese toothpaste containing a poisonous substance and a wholesaler that supplied local stores with the tubes, City Attorney Rocky Delgadillo announced Thursday.

Selective Imports Corp. sold the toothpaste containing diethylene glycol to distributors nationwide between December 2005 and May 2007, prosecutors said. Vernon Sales Inc. is accused of buying some of the tubes and reselling them to Los Angeles stores.

Diethylene glycol is a chemical used in antifreeze and as a solvent. Chinese manufacturers have used the chemical, known as DEG, as a cheaper alternative to glycerin, which thickens toothpaste. Exposure to DEG, however, can cause kidney and liver damage over time.

Vernon Sales President Kamyab Toofer, Vice President Pejman Mossay and the company itself each were charged with 14 criminal counts of receiving, selling and delivering an adulterated drug.

Selective Imports, its president, Frahad Nazarian and Vice President Yones Ghermezi each were charged with two criminal counts each of receiving, selling and delivering products containing DEG.

The companies are liable for distributing the tainted product even if they had no direct knowledge of the risk because they were negligent in not ensuring the toothpaste was safe, Supervising Deputy City Attorney Jerry Baik said.

The misdemeanor charges were filed Monday, he said. Each count carries a maximum penalty of one year in jail and a $1,000 fine.

Ghermezi said he had not seen the charges but was shocked by the filing. All the adulterated toothpaste was voluntarily pulled from shelves and from his Vernon, Calif., company's inventory eight months ago and destroyed by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration last month, he said.

"Everything we had was destroyed by the FDA," Ghermezi said. "I thought the file had been closed."

Ghermezi said he supplied the toothpaste to Vernon Sales, also based in Vernon. He said his company never knowingly sold adulterated toothpaste and believed the product had FDA approval.

"We didn't know of the ingredients of the toothpaste," he said. "We don't (have) any intention of hurting people."

Unfortunately there will be more fines like these and more companies will pay for unknowingly passing on unchecked products until we get better testing. Someone could make a mint selling testing kits to households... testing kits that actually work, please. There are a lot of them out there that deliberately DON'T. In this Bush Era of Unaccountability, who wants real oversight?

Cheaper is not always better, especially at 31,000 feet

...the FAA is reporting that the newest passenger planes are held together with "substandard" parts. The oversight at several supplier factories was so shoddy that workers were caught using rulers made of scotch-tape and paper.

The report cited four engine failures in 2003 -- three on the ground, one in flight -- that were traced to "unapproved design changes made by a . . . supplier" of speed sensors on engine fuel pumps. It did not cite any more recent incidents, nor did it specify the degree to which continuing problems with parts threaten to cause similar failures.

During a visit to one parts supplier, the inspector general's office observed an employee who "used a piece of paper, scotch-taped to the work surface, as a measuring device for a length of wire on an oil and fuel pressure transmitter."

So we will now have airplanes falling out the skies because the corporations want to make more money? What happened to safety first? The lives of ... you know... the customers and crew and the people on the ground? Will these crashes be blamed on terrorists when it is actually corporate greed that causes them?

China still thinks it can get away with it

Their indifference to the world community has never been plainer:

TOKYO — The Japanese government said Friday that at least 175 people had been sickened by insecticide-tainted dumplings from China, prompting supermarkets to pull Chinese-made meat products from their shelves while Tokyo pressed Beijing to improve food safety.

Newspaper headlines warned of a national panic as hundreds more people complained of dizziness and nausea after eating dumplings and other Chinese-made foods. As of Friday, a dozen Japanese food processing companies said they had issued recalls for at least 59 meat products imported from China.

All came from the same company that produced the tainted dumplings, Tianyang Food Processing, in Hebei Province, outside Beijing, the Japanese Health Ministry said. While pesticide has been found only in the dumplings, the ministry said it had halted the sale of all the company’s products.

Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda and other leaders tried to reassure the public that the steps were enough to ensure food safety in Japan, which imports more Chinese food than does the United States. But public opinion appeared at times to carry a tinge of hysteria, and a half dozen large supermarket and department store chains announced that they had taken all Chinese-made processed foods off their shelves.

China will be haunted by its inability to enforce product safety.

And consumers of China's products will take years and years to forget:

WASHINGTON, Jan. 24 The U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission announced the recall of about 15,000 "Big Wooden Blocks" and "Jumbo Wooden Train" sets due to high lead content.

The CPSC said the toys, imported from China by Christmas Tree Shops of South Yarmouth, Mass., contain surface paint that might violate the federal lead paint standard.

The Big Wooden Blocks sets contain 30 or 60 colorful block pieces in 11 geometric shapes. The Jumbo Wooden Train sets contain 70 wooden pieces, including trees, stop and railroad crossing signs, a red wooden engine and green train cars.

The recall involves Big Wood Blocks sets with UPC 14559211 and 14559235, as well as 70-piece Jumbo Wooden Train sets with UPC 14217340.

The recalled products were sold across Northeast and Mid-Atlantic states from October 2006 through November 2007 for between $4 and $20.

This should last about two minutes....

Until the customers get distracted. Then it will be business as usual.

WASHINGTON (MarketWatch) -- China has agreed to certify the safety of exported food, drugs and medical devices, creating tracking systems and sharing more information about companies with the United States, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services said Tuesday.

Items targeted in the start of the new program include farm-raised fish, such as shrimp and catfish, pet foods and materials used to make food, such as wheat gluten. Several drugs covered include oseltamivir, an antiviral to treat flu, some antibiotics and atorvastatin, a cholesterol-lowering drug.

The agreements, which call for goods from China to meet U.S. standards for safety, follow American anxiety over the list of tainted imports used by consumers and their pets. Mike Leavitt, Health and Human Services secretary, said America's import-safety system is not adequate for the future and the new agreements with China will "enhance the safety" of household items.

"To keep up with the pace of global commerce, we need a fundamental shift, from trying to catch unsafe products as they come in, to building quality and safety into products before they reach our borders," Leavitt said.

[snip]

"Chinese authorities have pledged to provide timely notification to U.S. regulators under a wide range of circumstances, including the failure of a facility to meet inspection requirements and the suspension or revocation of a manufacturer's certification status," Leavitt said.

U.S. food and drug inspectors will also gain broader access to Chinese production facilities and on an expedited basis, according to HHS.

Within 120 days, a working group with U.S. and Chinese officials will meet to develop a plan to implement the drug and medical devices agreement. Within 60 days, another group with representatives from both countries will meet to develop an implementation plan for the food agreement.

Earlier this year, China's product-safety agency said it would start immediately to work on eliminating lead paint from toys shipped to the United States. That move, announced in September, came in the wake of a series of recalls involving toys contaminated with lead. See full story.

The list of lead-related recalls in 2007 has eclipsed prior years, with the most recent, announced Friday, touching about 260,000 China-made children's sunglasses.

China has learned well at the knee of the neocons, corporations rule, greed is good, and the consumer needs to be parted quickly from his money. Nothing else matters.

I can't imagine why this is...

Security concerns raised as China fills U.S. medicine chest

BEIJING — The medicine cabinet in the average U.S. home is filling with drugs made in China, and some experts say that could be a prescription for trouble.

China's booming pharmaceutical industry has doubled exports to the United States in the past five years, undercutting competitors and making American consumers reliant on the safety of Chinese factories and captive to any disruptions in Sino-U.S. commerce.

I mean, China has done such a wonderful job of respecting the consumer.

Are non-responsive comas part of buying toys from China?

Because I now check to see where whatever I am buying is made. And if it says China, I really have to ask myself if I trust the product.

Because China has learned only the greed side of capitalism... not the side about losing customers.



This toy will kill your kids.

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Millions of Chinese-made toys have been pulled from shelves in North America and Australia after scientists found they contain a chemical that converts into a powerful date rape drug when ingested. Two children in the U.S. and three in Australia were hospitalized after swallowing the beads.

With only seven weeks until Christmas, the recall is yet another blow to the toy industry -- already bruised by a slew of recalls this past summer. In the United States, the toy goes by the name Aqua Dots, a highly popular holiday toy distributed by Toronto-based Spin Master Toys. They are called Bindeez in Australia, where they were named toy of the year at an industry function earlier this year.

It could not immediately be learned whether Aqua Dots beads are made in the same factories as the Bindeez product. Both are sold by Australia-based Moose Enterprises.

The toy beads are sold in general merchandise stores and over the Internet for use in arts and crafts projects. They can be arranged into designs and fused together when sprayed with water.

Scientists say a chemical coating on the beads, when ingested, metabolizes into the so-called date rape drug gamma hydroxy butyrate. When eaten, the compound -- made from common and easily available ingredients -- can induce unconsciousness, seizures, drowsiness, coma and death.

Naren Gunja from Australia's Poisons Information Center said the drug's effect on children was "quite serious ... and potentially life-threatening."

This toy was made in China.

Keeping track of the other incidences:
poisonous baby clothing,
toys,
cub scout patches,
food poisoning of school children,
hydrogen explosions in school,
toxic seafood and pork....

Update: How could I forget about the poisoning pet food with melamine?
And toothpaste?
And cough syrup?

Update: J. Goodrich at American Prospect (also known as our wonderful Echidne of Echidne of the Snakes blogger) wrote an article about China's food production, saying:

Whether the Bush administration is up to these challenges remains to be seen. A recent Washington Post article reports that the administration has opposed new safety rules for foreign foods, and that it views China more as a market for American products than as the source of potentially contaminated products later found in the United States. Add to that conservatives' general anti-regulation beliefs and their faith in unregulated markets, and one begins to have some doubts about reform. But the resumption of high-level trade talks with China this week gives the administration a good opportunity to dispel them by imposing stricter regulations on imports from China.

The administration should also promptly address the problem of the overburdened FDA, the firewall that is supposed to keep all of us safe. And how safe are we right now? Are we any better off than in the era before the passage of the 1938 food safety legislation? To return to the glycerin story, in early May of this year the FDA sent out an advisory which recommends -- but does not require -- that pharmaceutical manufacturers in this country test solvents marked as glycerin for the possible presence of diethylene glycol. Our next major food-safety scandal may be just around the corner.

And Tom Legg from Daai Tou Laam, look at what the Chinese do to their own children with pollution:

While China may imprison environmental activists who cross cadres and their business cronies, the news from a couple of days ago says the chickens are already coming home to roost as mainland birth defects have risen by 40% in the last 6 years.

The report said between two and three million Chinese babies are born with "visible defects" each year and up to 12 million more would develop defects later in life. The director of family planning in Shanxi province said the defects were directlty related to pollution.

Lovely.

(Updated to put in Echidne link.)

Update 11/19: Tom Legg of Daai Tou Laam Diary:

It surprised me a bit the first time that I read the product was made in Hong Kong, since most of these items are made in Shenzhen with the Hong Kong office handling sales and logistics. (The rather paltry division of labour between Hong Kong and the mainland is a topic of a post for another time.)

But further down comes the real kicker.

The toys were supposed to use 1,5-pentanediol, a nontoxic compound found in glue, but instead contained the harmful 1,4-butanediol, which is widely used in cleaners and plastics.

...

It's not clear why 1,4-butanediol was substituted. However, there is a significant difference in price between the two chemicals. The Chinese online trading platform ChemNet China lists the price of 1,4 butanediol at between about $1,350-$2,800 per metric ton, while the price for 1,5-pentanediol is about $9,700 per metric ton.

Understand? Companies outsource to China to get cheaper production costs. And the offices in the US and EU are constantly leaning on sales agents in HK and the mainland to come up with low low prices. Guess what that means? Low low quality with lots of cut corners. And with a little forged paperwork and a lot of levels of suppliers looking for and providing plausible deniability, the low low quality can become a threat to health, especially when the end users' government is committed to gutting government consumer safety protections.

OMG! The toys weren't enough?

Now China is poisoning Cub Scouts!

It takes a woman

To get a country to shape up and behave itself:

After this summer's wave of bad news about China's product safety, Beijing finally decided it was time to patch things up. So the leadership did exactly what it has done in every tough situation China has faced over the past decade or so: It called on 68-year-old Vice-Premier Wu Yi.

Her gentle, friendly demeanor can be deceiving: The highest-ranking woman in China's Communist Party hierarchy is Beijing's enforcer of last resort. In recent years, she has cleaned up the country's image after the SARS crisis, overseen the response to the AIDS epidemic, led tough trade negotiations with Washington, and shored up the mainland's shoddy record on intellectual-property rights.

And now she's head of a new high-level food, drug, and product safety team.

[snip]

She brings to the job a reputation as a tough negotiator with an almost obsessive attention to detail. She's not afraid of stern measures: During SARS, she quickly quarantined thousands of suspected patients. But she has a sense of humor and a degree of candor that's unusual in China, and she often gives the likes of U.S. Treasury Secretary Henry M. Paulson Jr. an affectionate hug before sitting down across the table.

We could sure use someone like that in this administration....



Update: She has her work cut out for her:

BEIJING (AP) — Chinese authorities ordered the recall of tainted leukemia drugs blamed for leg pains and other problems, state media reported Sunday, the latest crisis to strike the country's embattled food and drug industries.

Most of the drugs involved — methotrexate and cytarabin hydrochloride — have been recovered and authorities have traced the remainder, the Xinhua News Agency said. The report did not say if any of the drugs had been exported.
Authorities have banned the sale and distribution of the drugs, produced by the Shanghai Hualian Pharmaceutical Co., it said.

China, a major global supplier, has been facing growing international pressure to improve the quality of its exports after dangerous toxins — from lead to an antifreeze ingredient — were found in goods including toys and toothpaste.

China has been eager to cast itself as a victim, too, of unsafe imports. Xinhua on Saturday announced that inspectors recently found residue of the banned stimulant ractopamine in frozen pig kidneys imported from the United States and frozen pork spareribs from Canada. The names of the exporting companies were not identified. Ractopamine is forbidden for use as veterinary medicine in China.

Put down that fork!

Until you know exactly where that seafood and pork have been!:

At least 1 million pounds of suspect Chinese seafood landed on American store shelves and dinner plates despite a Food and Drug Administration order that the shipments first be screened for banned drugs or chemicals, an Associated Press investigation found.

The frozen shrimp, catfish and eel arrived at U.S. ports under an "import alert," which meant the FDA was supposed to hold every shipment until it had passed a laboratory test.

But that was not what happened, according to an AP check of shipments since last fall. One of every four shipments the AP reviewed got through without being stopped and tested. The seafood, valued at $2.5 million, was equal to the amount 66,000 Americans eat in a year.

FDA officials stuck the pond-raised seafood on their watch list because of worries it contained suspected carcinogens or antibiotics not approved for seafood.

No illnesses have been reported, but the episode raises serious questions about the FDA's ability to police the safety of America's food imports.

There is also problems with Chinese pork:

CHENGDU, China, Aug. 9 — A highly infectious swine virus is sweeping China’s pig population, driving up pork prices and creating fears of a global pandemic among domesticated pigs.

Animal virus experts say Chinese authorities are playing down the gravity and spread of the disease.

So far, the mysterious virus — believed to cause an unusually deadly form of an infection known as blue-ear pig disease — has spread to 25 of this country’s 33 provinces and regions, prompting a pork shortage and the strongest inflation in China in a decade.

More than that, China’s past lack of transparency — particularly over what became the SARS epidemic — has created global concern.

Tom Legg of The Daai Tou Laam Diary : (my bold)

But don't expect the Chinese government to really get serious about product safety. How many product safety scares have there been in the last few years? From fake baby formula to tainted fish to fake soy sauce to tainted bean curd sheet to a bridge that collapsed because there was no steel reinforcing-bar used.

If the CCP wants to product their people from eating hormone-laden pork, then that is their prerogative. If they instead want to ban products from the US as a tit-for-tat over negative press coverage of Chinese product safety issues, it shows the Chinese government is childish and easily manipulated by foreign powers. Like a recalled Chinese toy, press the right buttons and watch the CCP leaders dance. Watch the CCP spokesperson trotted out to blame it all on the US media. (This of course is the same lap dog US media that willingly served up the story on Mattel as model Chinese operator days before the first toy recall.)

Did you really expect the CCP to clean up their own house? The folks who trashed Premier Wen's Green GDP? The folks whose tactics to combat corruption hearken back to the Ming Dynasty with the substitution of video games for the study of Confucian classics? We aren't talking about leaders with a great ability to look in the mirror and see the problems staring back at themselves.

But to really clean house would come at too steep a price for many cadres and their cronies. So the CCP's option is to keep letting Chinese die at home and face negative press abroad and hope that enough exports keep getting out to keep the currency flow positive and enough skim from IPOs and LCs to keep investment bankers like former Goldman Sachs man US Treasury Secretary Paulson happy, so that their grip on power in Beijing is kept firm.

Did you know that lead is used as a stabilizer in recycled vinyl?

Doesn't excuse China though:

San Francisco, CA (AHN) - A California environmental group on issued warnings Wednesday against the use of vinyl baby bibs made in China and sold at Toys "R" Us stores after it was found they contain lead levels as high as three times the level allowed in paint in the bibs.

The Center for Environmental Health (CEH) in Oakland conducted safety tests on bibs with "Winnie the Pooh" characters and store-brand bibs sold under the Koala Baby and Especially for Baby labels. The bibs that were bought at San Francisco Bay-area Toys "R" Us and Babies "R" Stores were found to have the concentration of lead well above federal safety limits for lead in paint.

Associated Press quotes Caroline Cox, the center's research director as saying, "I don't think we should be exposing children to this toxic metal unnecessarily."

Following the reports, CEH now issued warning against Toys "R" Us, the country's second-largest toy seller, to take legal action to get vinyl baby bibs off store shelves.

California is a state with especially strict rules on lead exposure. However, Cox also added that lead is sometimes used as a stabilizer in vinyl. It can also occur unintentionally when recycled vinyl used for other purposes becomes part of a new product.

China goes for the gold

Or maybe the lead and the toxic chemicals...

LOS ANGELES - The Food and Drug Administration said Wednesday it is checking whether shipments of Chinese seafood on an agency watch list were properly cleared for public consumption without being tested for banned drugs or chemicals.

Agency officials said that while they believe the shipments were screened correctly, they wanted more details. That review comes in response to findings The Associated Press published Tuesday that at least 1 million pounds of frozen shrimp, catfish or eel raised in Chinese ponds were on an agency watch list but were not diverted to a lab.

Wait a minute! There's more:

NEWARK, N.J. - A tire importer said Thursday it would recall 255,000 Chinese-made tires it claims were defective because they lack a safety feature that prevents tread separation.

The recall involves half the number of tires that the importer, Foreign Tire Sales Inc., had identified in June as possibly posing a risk.

The models involved are steel-belted radial replacement tires for pickups, vans and sport utility vehicles that consumers bought from early 2004 through mid-2006, Foreign Tire Sales said.

The small company, based in Union, estimated the recall would cost it $20 million, spokesman Andrew D. Frank said. It was ordered by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration in June to recall as many as 450,000 tires that it bought from Hangzhou Zhongce Rubber Co. since 2002.

There seems to be a pattern here...

Canadians, before you brush your teeth

Check your toothpaste because it sounds as if the toxic stuff China sent to Central America has found its way to your shelves:

Guelph, ON (AHN) - Potentially tainted toothpaste may have been found on Canadian store shelves. Health Canada is testing the product and checking if it is linked to a recall in the U.S. involving counterfeit Colgate toothpaste found to contain an ingredient used in antifreeze.

The suspicious tube was found in a Guelph, Ontario dollar store. The packaging contained no French text, which is required on products sold in Canada, had spelling errors and said it was manufactured in South Africa.

[snip]

Consumers are being warned to check for an eight-digit drug identification number, a natural product number or a homeopathic medicine number to verify product authenticity.