Food safety concerns in China are nothing new. However a recent experiment has demonstrated that a mainstay of Asian kitchens – the rice cooker – may be leaving dangerous levels of arsenic in our diet.

Arsenic is a toxic metal which occurs naturally in two forms: organic and inorganic. Rice absorbs high levels of the more dangerous inorganic form because it grows in water. Until recently it was believed that cooking would remove these toxins from your food. How you cook it, though, turns out to be critical.

Presenters on the BBC TV program “Trust Me, I’m a Doctor” cooked rice three different ways, then tested the amount of arsenic in the resulting meals. They found that “steaming out”, the method used by rice cookers, eliminates virtually none of the arsenic, because the water in which it’s cooked is all reabsorbed. The only safe method, they concluded, is to soak the rice overnight, boil it in five parts water to one part rice, then wash it before serving. Unfortunately, this also has the effect of removing nutrients from the rice.

The type of rice used matters too, but not in the way you might expect. Organic rice has just as much arsenic as conventionally grown rice, and “healthy” brown rice has more. Rice cakes and crackers contain double the dose. Only basmati rice offers naturally lower levels of the poison.

This news follows recent concerns that the non-stick coating on rice cookers can release dangerous chemicals if it gets scratched. Many scientists now recommend that we stop buying non-stick pans altogether, because when thrown out they end up on landfills, leaching toxic chemicals into the environment.

So is it time to abandon this much-loved kitchen staple, and resign ourselves to soggy, but arsenic-free, rice? Or will Asia respond as much of the west did when bacon was officially classed as a carcinogen, and conclude that some risks are worth taking, if life is to be worth living?

As parents (happily) send their children back to school with new stationary, backpacks, and uniforms, the parent community has zoomed in on a Chinese school requirement: plastic book covers.

Plastic book covers are literally book jackets that are made of plastic. Schools will often require students to wrap their textbooks, workbooks, and even notebooks in plastic to protect them from water, dirt, and oil–a perfectly reasonable request when considering children’s sticky fingers and clumsy habits.

However, one dad in Hangzhou clearly had enough of plastic wrappers when he decided to test out the toxicity of book wrappers from touch–after all, it’s not as if children would typically chew on their book covers.  Wenfeng Wei tested a book wrapper for cancer causing chemicals, such as dibutylphthalate (DBP), di-2-ethylhexyl phthalate (DEHP), and benzene.  He bought seven different brands of plastic book covers, both from online and brick-and-mortar stores, and sent them to Product Quality Supervising and Inspecting Institute of Taizhou City (TQS). All seven products tested high on DBP and DEHP, which have both been proven toxic on some levels. Both DBP and DEHP have been banned in the EU at some point, especially with children’s toys and children’s hospital wards (France). Read the report in Chinese here.

Toxic cancer-causing plastic shouldn’t be surprising to anyone, as shown by the multitude of websites against PVC (vinyl plastic).  In fact, there’s even a campaign to ban “smelly plastic” imports from China.  Oh, and remember the toxic school running tracks? Those were made of recycled plastic and rubber and tested high on toxicity.

The report further shocks parents by pointing out that white paper is toxic as well–so not only should we not buy plastic book covers (opt for leather?), but we should avoid overly white paper because it has fluorescent agents (FWA). Parents should look for yellowish paper–perhaps schools should be petitioned as well!

Photo: 桶装铅笔直销厂家

With the investigation and removal of the allegedly toxic running tracks at Baiyunlu campus of Beijing No.2 Experimental Primary School, authorities had also investigated school classrooms in a follow-up air quality test.

However, the parents who reported the issue are dubious of the results. After all, despite the symptoms reported by the parents of over 40 students, the government had found the toxicity level of the running track to be normal. The school removed the track in spite of the negative result.

Beijing Municipal Education Commission announced on June 14^th that the air quality test conducted by China National Environmental Monitoring Center (CNEMC) showed that the school facilities did in fact meet quality standards for national environmental monitoring and synthetic playgrounds.

Parents are not convinced. They had hired a third-party laboratory, Shenzhen EMTEK Co., Ltd. (Shenzhen Lab), to test 16 classrooms in the school, six of which were the same rooms that were tested by CNEMC.

The Shenzhen Lab results showed an excessive amount of formaldehyde in all sixteen classrooms, wherein the music classroom had 2.83 mg of formaldehyde per cubic meter (of air)—11 times that of the CNEMC test results and 22 times above the recommended amount.

It turns out the two institutions use different testing methods and references, resulting in vastly different results.  CNEMC uses a technical method for determining formaldehyde in the air, which was established in 1995.  The Shenzhen Lab uses a more common testing method: the 2014-enacted Methods of Environmental Tests in Public Venues.

Both testing methods are allowed according to the National Standards of Indoor Air Quality, so a testing institution can determine which one to use. In this case, the question is why did CNEMC choose a testing method more commonly used for factory workshops than for public venues when a classroom is, by definition, a public venue?

The Beijing Education Commission has ordered all (school) synthetic sports fields inspected and has halted the construction of playgrounds until new guidelines are released.  Said guidelines will be created with the cooperation of quality-control and environmental protection departments as well as professional organizations. The new guidelines will be more stringent on the details of the manufacturing, construction, and assessment of playground safety.

Photo: Public Domain

All Beijing schools with sythetic running tracks and sports fields are to be tested for poisonous substances, following an incident in which dozens of students fell ill. The official government news agency Xinhua also reports that construction of new tracks has been halted pending the review.

The initial Beijing incident took place at the Baiyunlu campus of Beijing No.2 Experimental School in Xicheng District. Students using the running track suffered from nosebleeds, dizziness and coughs. Tests revealed that the track was emitting dangerous levels of benzene and formaldehyde. It appears that the track had been in use for nine months, but that the summer heat triggered the release of the poisonous gases.

Wang Dinghua, an official from the Ministry of Education, blamed “lax supervision” for the problems, and the authorities have promised to track down those responsible. According to China Daily though, the problem lies not only in standards not being complied with; the standards themselves are insufficiently stringent. Many harmful components are not listed, making their use in tracks legal.

The Beijing incident follows similar cases in Jiangsu, Guangdong,  Shanghai, Zhejiang, Jiangxi, Henan and elsewhere, and will inevitably raise further concerns among parents about safety standards in China.

Photo: nchenga, Flickr

As soon as they have the motor control to accomplish it, everything a baby encounters goes straight in their mouth. From gumming toys to soothe teething pains, to absentmindedly chewing on a pen, kids of all ages put plastics in their mouths on a daily basis. This week, The Guardian reports that counterfeit plastic toys imported from China to the UK contain dangerous levels of phthalates, a type of Endocrine Disrupting Chemical (EDC).

For a previous beijingkids article on toxic toys containing unsafe quantities of heavy metals, click here.

What are EDCs?
International POPs Elimination Network (IPEN) explains that EDCs are manufactured chemicals that interfere with the body’s normal hormonal functioning. (IPEN) is a collective of 700 environmental and public health groups with a mission to create chemicals policies and practices that protect human health and the environment. There are over 85,000 classifications of manufactured chemicals, and IPEN says thousands of these are suspected of being dangerous for humans.

People are exposed to EDCs through ingestion, application on the skin, inhalation, and in vitro transfer from mother to baby, or vice versa.

EDCs, found in many manufactured products, disrupt normal hormonal functioning by mimicking or blocking naturally occurring hormones; either by triggering or preventing biological processes. Most people are aware of the damaging actions of EDCs on normal estrogen functioning, which can for example cause feminizing in boys.

What are Phthalates?
Phthalates are chemical softeners, used to make plastic more pliable. If ingested, either by being chewed or by leaching into food or by contaminating liquids, phthalates are associated with negative effects on the development of the male reproductive system and in disrupting masculine neurological development. Phthalates have also been linked to cancer, obesity, liver damage, allergies, diabetes, and ADHD.

Phthalates in Children’s Toys
The use of phthalates is restricted in both the European Union (EU) and US, where they must make up less than 0.1 percent of plasticized parts of toys. Toys manufactured in China, and tested by the Chartered Trading Standards Institute (CSTI) in the UK contained 18 times the legal limit. A lead officer for product safety at the CSTI told The Guardian that,

"Phthalates are carcinogenic, mutagenic and can cause reproductive problems but, despite legislation to the contrary, significant amounts of these substances can be found in a wide range of toys and child care products. If these toys fall into the hands of very young children or babies, it’s more likely they will chew on the plastic and consume the chemicals."

Advice for Parents
If you’re buying toys for your children this Christmas, what can you do to protect them? It’s easy to feel overwhelmed when even the big names in toy manufacturing have been found to include unsafe toxins in their toys. Mattel, for example, has withdrawn millions of toys (which had been manufactured in China) over multiple product recalls because their toys contained illegal levels of toxins.

However, in general, global toy giants will have to abide by stricter US and EU legislation. So avoid buying toys at prices that are too good to be true, and cast a critical eye over packaging and presentation. If it looks cheap or fake, don’t buy it.

Environmental watchdog non-profit ecoRI Inc. has the following advice for parents:

• Choose toys made from natural materials such as raw, solid wood, and organic fibers
• Avoid toys manufactured before legislation to limit toxins in them was introduced (2009 in the US, 2006 in the EU)
• Look for PVC- and BPA-free products

Photo: Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons, Greenpeace

Yet another report has come out this week about the toxic nature of seemingly everything in China – this time, children’s clothes.

We’ll leave out the gory technical details – which you masochists can read for yourself in this Greenpeace investigation of garment factories in China – but suffice it to say it’s enough to make you forget about Beijing’s air, water and food problems for a minute and turn your parental radar towards questions of whether your kid’s jammies and cartoon character-emblazoned t-shirts are slowly killing them as well.

So what to do? Short of joining a nudist colony in some faraway tropical locale, we’re all going to need clothes. So with that in mind, here are some common-sense tips at least mitigate some parental fears about toxic clothing, culled from the Greenpeace report and this article from the helpful Washington Toxics Coalition:

Wash before wearing: Always wash new clothes multiple times before wearing, to remove as much of the gunk they put on stuff to make it look good in the shop as possible. Sites we’ve trolled all seem to indicate that simply washing once is not enough – the more cautious/paranoid (depending on your perspective) recommend washing up to 20 times before wearing.

Choose light colored clothing: Greenpeace says dark and brightly colored clothing typically requires more dyes and fixing agents. Light colored clothing is less likely to contain these chemicals.

Go for hand-me-downs: Hey, why not choose used clothing? Pre-worn gear means the item has likely already received multiple washings.

Avoid chemical fibers and functional clothing: And here we’ll quote directly from the Greenpeace report: “The production of chemical fibers (such as polyester, acrylic fibers etc.) and functional fabrics (with waterproof, sunscreen and no-ironing functions) may involve the use of toxic chemicals like antimony and PFCs."

Avoid thick printing on clothing: If the princess on daughter’s blouse or the car on your son’s t-shirt has a thick appearance, that’s a tell-tale sign that the design likely contains plasticizers, aka phthalates (no need to Google those terms — suffice it to say they’re things you don’t want on your kid). If your child absolutely must be emblazoned by a cartoon character, select clothes that have flat and thin printed designs.

Avoid strong smelling items: Need we say more? Natural, untreated fibers will not emit strong odors. If the fancy duds you’re about to buy emit some sort of smell, walk away.

For those of you looking for some safe shopping for kids gear, you could do worse than to check out the recent proliferation of natural clothing shops that have popped up in various Beijing malls.

Nature Colored (http://www.naturecolored.cn, site in Chinese only) offers a range of natural clothing as well as bed and bathware, and has locations in in the Kid’s Town area of Solana and the 3rd Floor of Indigo.

After reading the online warning of a Beijing mom who found balloons in Sanlitun containing flammable gases instead of helium, I decided to look further into the issue of toy safety in China. Countless products manufactured here are exported to toy stores around the world, but how certain can parents be that those for sale in Beijing meet international safety standards?

I soon found myself on a path to some shocking discoveries, at the center of which was a website set up by the International POPs Elimination Network (IPEN), a collective of environmental and health NGOs. Its online database reveals a host of seemingly innocuous toys and school supplies available in China containing worrying levels of heavy metals. Users can browse the potentially harmful children’s products (as well as cosmetics and household goods), many of which can be found in popular markets and supermarkets here in the capital.

The blacklist is the result of an IPEN study carried out in conjunction with the environmental charity Greenpeace back in 2011. But despite the shocking and important findings, it appears to have been poorly-publicized at the time of release. Only a handful of media picked up the story and this was the first that we’d heard of this invaluable resource.

Take for instance, this friendly-looking panda doll bought at Hongqiao Market. It was found to contain concerning levels of chromium and lead.

While this flashing ball from Carrefour in Fengtai District not only contained more than six times the lead discovered in the toy panda, but also worrying amounts of antimony and arsenic.

Other products were found to harbor a number of other harmful metals including mercury and cadmium. And because many of the toxic substances were found in the layers of paint, even the simplest of products, like toy cars, found their way on to the danger list.

When writing for beijingkids, I try not to be alarmist. Of course, this site had examples of dangerous toys but surely this had to be viewed in the context of the staggering number produced and sold in the capital each day? I had already started planning my blog post in my mind – bringing attention to the issue but reassuring parents that the majority of toy products made in China are perfectly safe.

But this soon turned out to be only marginally true. The study did find that the number of children’s products containing heavy metals constituted a minority. But only just.

In fact, of the 500 products children’s bought across China (Beijing and four other major cities), almost a third contained a worrying amount of at least one heavy metal.

So should the children of Beijing expats be confined to a toy-less youth, forced to make do with cardboard boxes and imagination?

The advice from Greenpeace on this matter is understandably vague, and reads:

“Consumers should carefully read product labels and try to identify chemical safety information before purchasing children’s products. Through their inquiries about corporate environmental policy and product chemical information, consumers can help drive companies to progressively reduce and ultimately eliminate hazardous chemicals from their products and production processes. Consumers should also support rigorous regulatory policies to limit the presence of toxic substances in products.” (www.greenpeace.org)

The sad fact of this matter is that it is very difficult to provide concrete advice on what parents can do to protect their children. To begin with, it is hard to ascertain the extent of the problem. And secondly, given that the presence of dangerous substances is imperceptible without X-ray scanning equipment, it is impossible for parents to know what is safe and what is not. So aside from lending your support to Greenpeace’s wider drive to improve standards, what can you do to protect your kids?

If you’re worried about products already purchased in China, use the IPEN website to browse by location (city and store/shopping mall) or product type. Names of manufacturers are featured alongside each product, so you may be able to cross-reference the worst offenders with your child’s existing toys.

When shopping in the future, you may also choose to avoid the markets listed on the site. It probably goes without saying that the more upmarket your shopping destination, the better the chance of finding safe toys. And while I am normally an advocate for independent retailers, it may also pay off to look for international toy brands.

But even this is not a guaranteed safe option. Global brands like Mattel have been forced into product recalls for heavy metal content though, as a rule, the strict quality controls placed on products exported to the US, Europe, and elsewhere make it more likely that big international manufacturers will comply with safe production standards.

Essentially, it is up to each parent to decide what precautions to take. But many may feel that a few tears at bedtime as you throw out some of your children’s favorite toys or having to turn down a kind offering from your ayi are prices worth paying.

Photos from www.ipen-china.org and Wikimedia Commons

After three years of searching and four offers that didn’t pan out, I’m happy to announce that we have finally bought a home of our own. Unfortunately, we have purchased this home in presumably the worst time to buy property in Beijing – a time when CBD apartment prices are at an all-time high, and real estate agents are so desperate, they’re hanging out in droves outside of properties trying to hawk homes to just about any one who passes by.

Despite our bad timing, we’re taking consolation in assuming that real estate prices will continue to rise (even after the Olympics) and feel slightly vindicated that we will no longer deal with unpredictable landlords and broken-down furnishings—we can finally assume full control (more or less) of our living environment.

We’re also relishing the opportunity to fix up our own place – a nicely laid out three-bedroom second-hand apartment – and have begun our home materials hunt in earnest. But a nagging question still looms in the back of our minds: how safe will it be decorate our apartment with a baby in tow?

It isn’t a top-to-bottom project – all we really need to do is re-paint the walls, tear down one wall, install a couple of new sinks, and re-tile the showers in both bathrooms (which are at present tomato red and puke green in color).

From a zhuangxiu company’s perspective, our project is small potatoes and should be done in no time at all. But for us it still seems like a Herculean task given how much we have to prepare and purchase in the interim.

Selecting a safe brand of paint is priority number one. Color coordination aside, we definitely do not want to coat our walls with a paint that could slowly poison us; for the past few weeks, we’ve been searching extensively for a brand and a dealer we can trust.

In theory, any major internationally known brand (i.e. Nippon and Dulux) should suffice – all purport environmentally safe levels of VOC (volatile organic compounds) and quick drying time after application (the paint distributors we’ve checked out have all been particularly keen on claiming that their paint “dries within hours” and how we can “move in the same day!”). We’ve also done some research on brands of solvent-free, organic-based, green paints (i.e. Milk Paint) – but we were unable to find any distributors in Beijing.

Thus our nagging doubts persist. News reports show sketchy zhuangxiu companies switching out the paint their clients supply and replacing it with cheaper varieties so they can resell the more expensive cans. More troubling is the notion that the so-called “imported” varieties (the ones that have “EPA approved” and “guaranteed low VOC” written on the cans) are simply repackaged with low-grade local paint. We can’t help but wonder about the “straight-out-of-the-shipping-container” cans that dealers claim are 100% safe – how easy would it be to slip in a bribe here and there?

Since there is no way for us to be absolutely certain, our final decision was made with a leap of faith – we decided to play it safe and purchase the most expensive variety (a German brand) from one of the most well-known “home décor” centers in town – we even asked the salesperson to show us the import records and chops (which my wife seemed to think was up to snuff) before forking over the cash. We definitely don’t want to find out the hard way about just how safe our selection of paint is, and despite all claims of “insta-drying” and low VOC, our newly furbished place will remain empty for a while as we air it out.