What’s new? Following a list of recent China’s below-par quality of its manufactured products, here’s another one to add on to its seemingly never-ending list.

It has just been reported that nearly half of the clothings and a third of the furniture made for children in China’s top manufacturing province Guangdong is unsafe, with many products containing harmful chemicals (source):

BEIJING (AFP) — The discovery was made in an official investigation by authorities in the southern province of Guangdong, the centre of China’s manufactured export industry, the China Daily reported.

It said just 53.5 percent of garments surveyed met safety standards, with many containing excess amounts of formaldehyde, a chemical that can cause skin or respiratory infections.

As for children’s furniture, 67.7 percent of it was deemed safe, with some of the questionable products containing too much formaldehyde or health-endangering heavy metals including lead, cadmium and chromium.

“The main reason for the excessive content of formaldehyde and heavy metals is the use of substandard raw materials and paints,” Lin Ruixi, spokesman for the province’s product safety administration, was quoted as saying.

Although the findings only quoted Guangdong, it’s important to note that it doesn’t mean that children’s clothings and furniture made in other provinces of China are safe. It only simply means that no studies have been made in those provinces yet, and could be a matter of time before more alarming (but not surprising) reports are unveiled, given China’s reputation of poorly regulated and corruption-plagued manufacturing industry.

Locally in Singapore, I’ve noticed many children’s clothes sold here are made in China (though the tag will rarely indicate which province they are from) so these findings should be a cause of alarm, especially for us parents.

I’m not sure if Darius has been affected by the excess formaldehyde found in half of these clothings from China, though he hasn’t developed skin and respiratory infections yet (but effects might be felt later?), but I’ll be sure to start having second thoughts before buying more clothings made in China for him.

Besides those ‘brand-less’ clothings, I wonder if those famous brands dealing in children’s clothings do actually have their products manufactured in China too, since doing so will lower their production costs. I’ve tried searching for such information on the Web but apparently not much research has been made into that yet. Hopefully there are stronger quality control by these big-name companies and their products are classified under the ‘safe 53.5%’.

For now, let us parents be aware of this report before we purchase our next set of clothings and furniture for our children. As the saying goes, it’s always better to be safe than sorry.

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