The Belgian shopper group Testaankoop has discovered harmful substances in Shein kids’s clothes. The non-profit introduced this in a press launch. The group examined 25 kids’s clothes objects from the Chinese language webshop and seemed for the presence of varied dangerous substances, together with hormone disruptors, nickel, lead, dimethylformamide, quinoline, perfluorinated and polyfluorinated chemical compounds (PFCs). The check confirmed that 10 of the 25 Shein kids’s clothes incorporates at the least one hazardous substance.
Along with pores and skin irritation, the substances can even disrupt an individual’s hormone stability. “It’s particularly necessary for kids to reveal them as little as doable to hormone disruptors, as a result of they’re nonetheless in full growth and subsequently additional delicate to the consequences,” says Testaankoop. The chemical compounds can have an effect on the immune system and replica. Nonylphenol ethoxylate, a substance present in Shein kids’s clothes, can also be dangerous to aquatic organisms.
The group advocates stricter European laws. “Too many merchandise nonetheless enter the inner market, regardless of European laws on product security. Extra checks by European and nationwide authorities similar to the online retailers themselves would improve the prospect of being caught and pressure producers to conform,” mentioned spokesperson Laura Clays.
Overseas net retailers typically carry harmful substances
Not solely Shein, but additionally the online retailers Temu, Want, AliExpress and Amazon have been alerted for many years to the facilitation of hazardous substances in clothes. In 2014, Greenpeace known as out the Chinese language authorities to cease the manufacturing of harmful kids’s clothes. China is the biggest textile producer on this planet.
In 2022, Greenpeace Germany acknowledged based mostly by itself analysis that Shein’s trend contained “worrying quantities” of harmful chemical compounds. The quick trend large acknowledged to FashionUnited to do every part we will to “present customers with secure and dependable merchandise.”