Just another day of poisonous products coming from the world's largest dictatorship. From the Sydney Morning Herald:
The international journal Allergy has confirmed what thousands of British and mainland European citizens have known for more than a year: new leather sofas imported from China are a hotbed of allergens.Chinese products are everywhere in the US. And all of them are likely made using some kind of chemicals somewhere along the way.
Dimethyl fumarate, in the form of a fine, white crystalline powder, was found in sachets embedded in the furniture sourced to China. It is believed the body heat generated from sitting on a contaminated couch causes a toxic vapour to seep out....
About 200,000 of the suspect couches have been imported by 15 furniture retailers in Britain alone and compensation for victims, some of whom required hospital treatment, could be in the tens of millions of dollars.
Chinese goods make up a huge percentage of the products in our stores. I remember a few years back, I decided to survey the holiday products (Christmas and Easter) in the local drugstores. By my unofficial count, 90% of the products were made in China. They're everywhere. So all of this poison is a problem. But, their products are cheap. That's why the businesses are stocking them - Chinese products save us money. If we shift away to other products, it means inflation, and ultimately, less money in our pockets. Then again, it means not having to worry about poisoning our pets and our children and our house guests.
It's an interesting question as to whether the rash of poison products coming from China in any way shows that capitalism beats communism. Granted, we've had our own doozy of a meltdown, where our own system of checks and balances clearly didn't fix things before they went too far. But wasn't our failure really the same as China's? Under the Republicans, didn't we too have an economy that was without checks and balances due to an out of touch, overly strong central government that was only interested in profit, and helping its friends? That did everything for business, and nothing for the consumer?
At least we were able to change governments. What can China do to rescue itself?
