Baby seats, sanitary goods fail standards

Nearly 20 percent of imported baby safety seats for cars failed to meet China's standards last year, the country's top quality watchdog said on Tuesday.

Almost 24 percent of disposable sanitary goods imported last year were also substandard, the General Administration of Quality Supervision, Inspection and Quarantine said.

Sample checks covering more than 1,000 imported baby safety seats found more than 200 were substandard.

The administration said the main problems with the products were a lack of Chinese labeling or user guidance manuals, and failure in impact tests, putting infants at risk in case of car accidents.

Baby seats that failed to reach sanitary, safety and environmental protection standards were destroyed or returned to their places of manufacture, the administration said.

Sun Wenkang, director of the administration's Department of Inspection Supervision, said, "Many importers are not familiar with the inspection and quarantine rules and failed to label the goods in Chinese."

Such products are usually allowed to enter China only after they are properly labeled, he said.

Under the Product Quality Law, all products sold on the Chinese mainland must include labeling in Chinese. This must specify the name of the product, the manufacturer and the manufacturer's addresses.

The administration also said similar problems were found in disposable sanitary goods, such as diapers and sanitary pads.

Last year, authorities across China inspected 16,800 disposable sanitary goods with a total value of $737 million, and 23.9 percent of them failed to meet standards, a year-on-year increase of 3.03 percentage points.

The substandard goods, valued at $229 million, included a wide range of products, such as paper diapers for babies, sanitary pads for women, face tissues and paper towels. They were imported from more than 30 countries and regions, including Japan, South Korea and the United States.