More Corporate Greed: Unsafe goods go abroad

[AnnInLa]

November 2004

Rejected by U.S., unsafe goods go abroad

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You may have thought that dangerous household products that are stopped at U.S. ports or discovered on store shelves are either repaired or destroyed. But millions of hazardous products, including toys, cribs, electrical goods, and flammable clothing, have been gathered up and sent abroad.


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More than 900 times between 1994 and 2004, products that violated mandatory federal safety standards were exported, according to commission records. But that probably understates the total number of dangerous exports. Since 1990, records show, the CPSC cited another 22,000 products for safety violations. They include items recalled, stopped at ports, or subject to other enforcement actions. We don't know how many of those products were exported.

Most exports approved by the CPSC are intended for return to the manufacturers, the agency says, mainly in China, Taiwan, and Hong Kong, thus holding them accountable for fixing problems.

But not all these exports make it to their claimed destination. In a ruse known as port shopping, substandard imports that Customs turns away from one U.S. port can enter the country through another port. “If you say, ‘We won't take it but we'll let you take it back to where it came from,' they will take it out 12 miles into international waters and they can turn it around and bring it in through another port, maybe under another broker,” says Brian Monks, director of anticounterfeiting for Underwriters Laboratories. The practice is one reason UL destroys goods that violate its trademark, as allowed under intellectual property laws.

more at www.consumerreports.org.....click on Unsafe Goods Go Abroad

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