CHINA Poisions thier own Babies

China’s quality challenge has at times been compared to Japan’s efforts in the 1950s and 1960s to transcend a bad reputation for manufacturing low-quality goods.
Although the automotive recalls currently underway are extensive, design errors and electronic malfunctions are in a different league from China’s instances of willful product manipulation, especially when that manipulation has involved artful efforts at circumventing third-party controls.

In China, operators display an incredible willingness to place public safety at risk in exchange for only the smallest gains in profit. The dairy industry’s 2008 scandal is instructive.
The trouble started when dairy farmers began adulterating milk with water, prompting dairy companies to test protein levels. Milk suppliers next discovered they could trick laboratory equipment into believing protein concentrations were higher by adding a toxic, chemical compound—melamine. Over time, more of the chemical was added, along with more water, and no one knows how little real milk was in the final product by the time scandal broke. We only know the end result: six babies died, 300,000 were sickened and over 50,000 were hospitalized, causing untold grief to Chinese families.

It was not just the amount of suffering endured, but the fact that the contamination was an open secret shared by possibly hundreds of individuals at dozens of companies.

Making matters worse has been the government’s wrongheaded response. Beijing reacted to this year’s melamine scandal with a heavy-handed cover-up. Chinese journalists have been warned not to report details surrounding milk cases.

Parents of children sickened by melamine-tainted products who have attempted to organize themselves to protest or seek compensation risk being sent to jail for “social disruption.”

China’s state-directed legal system has failed to provide justice to victims. China’s response to past scandals has been to protect industry with a government shield, so no one should be surprised when fraud recurs in such an environment.

Accidents can happen in almost any production process, but melamine did not coincidentally make its way into milk.
The current melamine scandal was made possible by the many tons of melamine that remained from the 2008 scandal. Some distributors chose to repackage the tainted powder and put it on store shelves. They couldn’t stand the thought of throwing away so much milk powder, even if it was dangerously contaminated.

U.S. probes toxic cadmium in jewelry from China

08:11 AM CST on Tuesday, January 12, 2010

The Associated Press

LOS ANGELES – watchdogs opened a new front Monday in the campaign to keep poisons out of Chinese imports, launching inquiries into high levels of cadmium in children's jewelry, while Wal-Mart pulled many items from its stores' shelves.

A day after The Associated Press documented the contamination in an investigative report, the top U.S. consumer safety regulator warned Asian manufacturers not to substitute other toxic metals for lead in children's charm bracelets and pendants.

the AP report, which found that some Chinese manufacturers have been using cadmium, sometimes at extraordinarily high levels. Congress clamped down on lead in those products in 2008, but cadmium is even more harmful.

Melissa Hill, a spokeswoman for Wal-Mart Stores Inc., called the AP findings "troubling."

Sen. Bill Nelson, a Florida Democrat, said he was reviewing the law that regulates such substances to decide whether a fix is needed.

Cadmium, which is known to cause cancer, is a soft, whitish metal that occurs naturally in soil. It's perhaps best-known as half of rechargeable nickel-cadmium batteries but also is used in pigments, electroplating and plastic.
Cadmium is attractive to Chinese manufacturers because it is cheap and easy to work with. But, like lead, it can hinder brain development in the very young, recent research has shown.

chairwoman of the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission, urged other countries to ensure that manufacturers do not substitute cadmium, antimony or barium for lead in children's products.

I was told that this is a DNA springer, and that this is not uncommon for the DNA springer fork to do this.

All things from china seam to be messed with in some manner or another. Material data sheets that come with material are often ISO9000 certified but when tested by a US company for that purpose fall very far below what they should (according to thier own (china) test records)

Unfortunately Similar products in USA for many industries just don't exist or are really not made in USA just assembled here.

The way we can get by with anything (component wise) made in china is to over design the part by a factor of 5 compared to what you would require from an honest US company.....that's unfortunately how it is.

fortunately for you Harley fans (customs as well) there are still companies in the USA making products almost wholly made in the USA like American suspension. and others.

whats that old adage? "you get what you pay for!"