Children’s products sold by the Chinese-founded online shopping giant Shein (希音) contained toxic substances in amounts hundreds of times above acceptable levels, the Seoul City Government said yesterday.
Shein, headquartered in Singapore, has skyrocketed in popularity around the world in the past few years, offering a vast selection of trendy clothes and accessories at stunningly low prices.
That explosive growth has also led to increased scrutiny of its business practices and safety standards, including in the EU and South Korea — where Seoul authorities have been conducting weekly inspections of items sold by platforms including Shein, Temu and AliExpress (全球速賣通).
Photo: Reuters
In the latest round, they selected eight products sold by Shein, including children’s shoes, leather bags and a belt and found several to contain high amounts of phthalates — chemicals used to soften plastics.
One pair of shoes contained 428 times the permitted levels of phthalates — the highest observed so far during the Seoul inspections — and three bags had amounts as high as 153 times the limit, the city government said.
Phthalates are widely used to soften plastic and are found in thousands of products including containers, beauty products and toys. They have been known for decades to cause hormone disruptions and have been linked to obesity, heart disease, some cancers and fertility problems.
Seoul city official Park Sang-jin said that they have requested the removal of these products from sale, adding that since the city began inspections last month, most platforms have complied with such requests.
So far, Seoul authorities said they have inspected 93 products and found that almost half of them contained toxic substances. The items include children’s watches and coloring pencils.
Last month, the EU added Shein to its list of digital firms that are big enough to come under stricter safety rules — including measures to protect customers from unsafe products, especially those that could be harmful to minors.
Intel Corp chief executive officer Lip-Bu Tan (陳立武) is expected to meet with Taiwanese suppliers next month in conjunction with the opening of the Computex Taipei trade show, supply chain sources said on Monday. The visit, the first for Tan to Taiwan since assuming his new post last month, would be aimed at enhancing Intel’s ties with suppliers in Taiwan as he attempts to help turn around the struggling US chipmaker, the sources said. Tan is to hold a banquet to celebrate Intel’s 40-year presence in Taiwan before Computex opens on May 20 and invite dozens of Taiwanese suppliers to exchange views
Application-specific integrated circuit designer Faraday Technology Corp (智原) yesterday said that although revenue this quarter would decline 30 percent from last quarter, it retained its full-year forecast of revenue growth of 100 percent. The company attributed the quarterly drop to a slowdown in customers’ production of chips using Faraday’s advanced packaging technology. The company is still confident about its revenue growth this year, given its strong “design-win” — or the projects it won to help customers design their chips, Faraday president Steve Wang (王國雍) told an online earnings conference. “The design-win this year is better than we expected. We believe we will win
Chizuko Kimura has become the first female sushi chef in the world to win a Michelin star, fulfilling a promise she made to her dying husband to continue his legacy. The 54-year-old Japanese chef regained the Michelin star her late husband, Shunei Kimura, won three years ago for their Sushi Shunei restaurant in Paris. For Shunei Kimura, the star was a dream come true. However, the joy was short-lived. He died from cancer just three months later in June 2022. He was 65. The following year, the restaurant in the heart of Montmartre lost its star rating. Chizuko Kimura insisted that the new star is still down
While China’s leaders use their economic and political might to fight US President Donald Trump’s trade war “to the end,” its army of social media soldiers are embarking on a more humorous campaign online. Trump’s tariff blitz has seen Washington and Beijing impose eye-watering duties on imports from the other, fanning a standoff between the economic superpowers that has sparked global recession fears and sent markets into a tailspin. Trump says his policy is a response to years of being “ripped off” by other countries and aims to bring manufacturing to the US, forcing companies to employ US workers. However, China’s online warriors
RSS