The Straits Exchange Foundation (SEF) yesterday guaranteed the safety of prefabricated housing donated by China, saying the formaldehyde content met national standards.
SEF Spokesman Maa Shaw-chang (馬紹章) said the formaldehyde in prefabricated houses mainly comes from the adhesives, which would be provided by Taiwanese companies.
The housing was manufactured in accordance with the design requested by the government and specifications set by the Construction and Planning Agency, Maa said.
Maa made the remarks after meeting members of the Taiwan Merchant Association in China’s Shenzhen City yesterday morning. The association yesterday donated NT$20 million (US$625,000) to the SEF.
As of yesterday, the SEF said it had received more than NT$30 million in its relief account and expects to receive about NT$70 million more.
The first shipment of the 1,000 prefabricated housing units donated by China arrived at Kaohsiung Harbor on Tuesday afternoon. The shipment was immediately transported to Chiatung Township (佳冬), Pingtung County, but was rejected by the township office, which questioned the safety of the units.
“I have read that they may be poisonous, so I am afraid to let my people live in them,” township chief Lai Hsien-ho (賴憲和) told reporters on Tuesday.
Lai was referring to media reports that claimed that after China’s Sichuan Earthquake, some pregnant women suffered stillbirths or miscarriages as a result of living in formaldehyde-contaminated prefab homes.
A shipment of 500 automatic disinfection machines, 10,000 blankets and 10,000 sleeping bags donated by China also arrived at Kaohsiung Airport on Tuesday afternoon.
Maa said the SEF and its Chinese counterpart, the Association for Relations Across the Taiwan Strait (ARATS), were both very concerned about reports on the quality of the prefabricated housing.
After inquiring with ARATS about the matter, Maa said the first shipment met the national standards of both Taiwan and China.
While Taiwan’s maximum allowed level of formaldehyde content is 0.12 parts per million per square meter, Maa said, that of China was 0.08 and that the shipment measured 0.02. The Construction and Planning Agency would inspect the prefabricated housing units to ensure their safety, Maa said.
Regarding the quality of the remaining 900 units yet to be sent, Maa said they would be made by the same manufacturer.
China’s Taiwan Affairs Office vouched for the safety of the prefabricated housing yesterday, saying examinations indicated that it met the standards of both China and Taiwan.
Spokeswoman Fan Liqing (范麗青) blamed “some Taiwanese politicians” for spreading “irresponsible” rumors to “hurt the feelings of the people on both sides [of the strait].”
“It is really regretful,” Fan said.
Meanwhile, the Bureau of Standards, Metrology and Inspection (BSMI) said that as the houses are made of steel sheets instead of wood, they should not contain any formaldehyde.
BSMI Deputy Director-General Huang Lai-ho (黃來和) said the bureau had inspected three of the units yesterday and the houses were made of steel, not wood.
As the issue is quite sensitive, the bureau would inspect the rest of the cargo today, Huang said.
Environmental Protection Administration (EPA) Director-General of Air Quality Protection and Noise Control Hsieh Yeih-Rui (謝燕儒), said the inspection process would be in two stages.
“First the BSMI will inspect the materials, then the EPA will check the safety of the air in [three sample] houses after they are assembled,” Hsieh said.
Upon hearing the news, Lai said residents have told him that if a sample house was built and found to be safe to live in, they would be willing to reside in the houses.
A group of Taiwanese-American and Tibetan-American students at Harvard University on Saturday disrupted Chinese Ambassador to the US Xie Feng’s (謝鋒) speech at the school, accusing him of being responsible for numerous human rights violations. Four students — two Taiwanese Americans and two from Tibet — held up banners inside a conference hall where Xie was delivering a speech at the opening ceremony of the Harvard Kennedy School China Conference 2024. In a video clip provided by the Coalition of Students Resisting the CCP (Chinese Communist Party), Taiwanese-American Cosette Wu (吳亭樺) and Tibetan-American Tsering Yangchen are seen holding banners that together read:
UNAWARE: Many people sit for long hours every day and eat unhealthy foods, putting them at greater risk of developing one of the ‘three highs,’ an expert said More than 30 percent of adults aged 40 or older who underwent a government-funded health exam were unaware they had at least one of the “three highs” — high blood pressure, high blood lipids or high blood sugar, the Health Promotion Administration (HPA) said yesterday. Among adults aged 40 or older who said they did not have any of the “three highs” before taking the health exam, more than 30 percent were found to have at least one of them, Adult Preventive Health Examination Service data from 2022 showed. People with long-term medical conditions such as hypertension or diabetes usually do not
POLICE INVESTIGATING: A man said he quit his job as a nurse at Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital as he had been ‘disgusted’ by the behavior of his colleagues A man yesterday morning wrote online that he had witnessed nurses taking photographs and touching anesthetized patients inappropriately in Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital’s operating theaters. The man surnamed Huang (黃) wrote on the Professional Technology Temple bulletin board that during his six-month stint as a nurse at the hospital, he had seen nurses taking pictures of patients, including of their private parts, after they were anesthetized. Some nurses had also touched patients inappropriately and children were among those photographed, he said. Huang said this “disgusted” him “so much” that “he felt the need to reveal these unethical acts in the operating theater
Heat advisories were in effect for nine administrative regions yesterday afternoon as warm southwesterly winds pushed temperatures above 38°C in parts of southern Taiwan, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. As of 3:30pm yesterday, Tainan’s Yujing District (玉井) had recorded the day’s highest temperature of 39.7°C, though the measurement will not be included in Taiwan’s official heat records since Yujing is an automatic rather than manually operated weather station, the CWA said. Highs recorded in other areas were 38.7°C in Kaohsiung’s Neimen District (內門), 38.2°C in Chiayi City and 38.1°C in Pingtung’s Sandimen Township (三地門), CWA data showed. The spell of scorching