Seventeen out of 20 sunglasses examined by the Consumer Protection Committee in a random inspection failed to meet standards, the committee told a news conference in Taipei yesterday.
The government’s Chinese National Standards (CNS) 15067 stipulate that sunglasses are ranked 0 to 4, with a lower rank meaning more light can pass through the lenses, the committee said.
Committee officer Wang Te-ming (王德明) said that level 0 lenses should have 80 percent or more light filtration, should be almost completely transparent and should be usable at night or in poor light.
Photo: Lo Chi, Taipei Times
Level 4 lenses allow less than 10 percent of light to pass, making them unsuitable for use when driving, Wang said.
Most people are not aware of the levels or what they mean, and often use lenses with a filtration level of 8 to 75 percent, which are not appropriate for driving, he said.
Some people wear glasses with polarized lenses when driving at night to mitigate the glare of headlights from oncoming vehicles, but the committee’s inspection showed that two such products failed to meet standards, he said.
Many people think that the fine print describing a product is not important and believe that a high-quality product means it is appropriate, Wang said.
However, labeling and warnings on a product are there to help people avoid risks, he said.
People should purchase sunglasses from legitimate sources and make sure that they have clear labeling, he said.
People should understand what level of filtration they need, he said.
If a consumer buys sunglasses and discover that they are poor quality, the Civic Code stipulates that they should be refunded by the store where they made the purchase, he said.
Former president Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) mention of Taiwan’s official name during a meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) on Wednesday was likely a deliberate political play, academics said. “As I see it, it was intentional,” National Chengchi University Graduate Institute of East Asian Studies professor Wang Hsin-hsien (王信賢) said of Ma’s initial use of the “Republic of China” (ROC) to refer to the wider concept of “the Chinese nation.” Ma quickly corrected himself, and his office later described his use of the two similar-sounding yet politically distinct terms as “purely a gaffe.” Given Ma was reading from a script, the supposed slipup
Former Czech Republic-based Taiwanese researcher Cheng Yu-chin (鄭宇欽) has been sentenced to seven years in prison on espionage-related charges, China’s Ministry of State Security announced yesterday. China said Cheng was a spy for Taiwan who “masqueraded as a professor” and that he was previously an assistant to former Cabinet secretary-general Cho Jung-tai (卓榮泰). President-elect William Lai (賴清德) on Wednesday last week announced Cho would be his premier when Lai is inaugurated next month. Today is China’s “National Security Education Day.” The Chinese ministry yesterday released a video online showing arrests over the past 10 years of people alleged to be
THE HAWAII FACTOR: While a 1965 opinion said an attack on Hawaii would not trigger Article 5, the text of the treaty suggests the state is covered, the report says NATO could be drawn into a conflict in the Taiwan Strait if Chinese forces attacked the US mainland or Hawaii, a NATO Defense College report published on Monday says. The report, written by James Lee, an assistant research fellow at Academia Sinica’s Institute of European and American Studies, states that under certain conditions a Taiwan contingency could trigger Article 5 of NATO, under which an attack against any member of the alliance is considered an attack against all members, necessitating a response. Article 6 of the North Atlantic Treaty specifies that an armed attack in the territory of any member in Europe,
The bodies of two individuals were recovered and three additional bodies were discovered on the Shakadang Trail (砂卡礑) in Taroko National Park, eight days after the devastating earthquake in Hualien County, search-and-rescue personnel said. The rescuers reported that they retrieved the bodies of a man and a girl, suspected to be the father and daughter from the Yu (游) family, 500m from the entrance of the trail on Wednesday. The rescue team added that despite the discovery of the two bodies on Friday last week, they had been unable to retrieve them until Wednesday due to the heavy equipment needed to lift