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“Made in China” has become a warning
label. Look out — toxics in toothpaste, arsenic in shrimp, lead in
toys! Politicians are pointing their fingers at
China’s lackadaisical approach to product safety. But wait a minute
— where, oh where, are our own regulatory watchdogs? The big shock is not that Chinese-made toys are laden
with lead but that America’s Consumer Product Safety Commission is a
toothless watchdog that employs exactly one inspector to oversee the safety
of all toys sold in the United States. Likewise, the Food and Drug
Administration has licensed 714 Chinese plants to manufacture the key
ingredients for a growing percentage of the antibiotics, painkillers, and
other drugs we buy but provides practically no oversight of these plants.
In 2007, for example, the FDA inspected only 13 of them.
An even bigger shock is that our consumer-protection
laws are so riddled with loopholes that unsafe products can legally come
into our country. Take phthalate, a chemical additive in plastics that is
suspected by scientists here and in Europe of inhibiting testosterone
production in infant boys. Yet Mark Shapiro, author of Exposed: The Toxic Chemistry of Everyday Products, reports that although the European Union has banned the
use of phthalates in products aimed at children under 3 years of age, our
government has refused to act. Thus China has factories that manufacture two lines
of toys — one without phthalates for shipment to European countries
and one with phthalates for export to our children. The problem is not with the Chinese but with our own
corporate chieftains who have moved their manufacturing to China
specifically to get these kinds of low-cost shortcuts in production while
simultaneously demanding that Washington cut back on regulations that
protect us consumers. We must put our own house in order.
Jim Hightower is a national radio commentator,
columnist, and author.
This article appears in Jan 17-23, 2008.
