THE CHINESE NEED CHECKERS
Lee Houston was right: the mess in China is our mess, too.
Brandonites may remember Lee as the manager brought in to begin the turnaround of the Vermont Tubbs Furniture plant and keep it competitive with lowball furniture from abroad, a task his successors have accomplished to an extraordinary degree. At a time when so many manufacturers have rolled over and died, Tubbs supplies big name stores with, rarity of rarities, something Made in America.
Lee got that job because he had a long record of working with companies in trouble, one that included several years helping companies in China—which gave him a broad view of the situation. He had lived with air pollution so bad you couldn’t see from one side of the city to another, had witnessed workers living in prison-like barracks under robotic conditions, and knew firsthand about dealing with corrupt officials.
Three years ago, he emailed me and told me that if I wanted a good book project, or a team of journalists wanted to do a news series, there was a big story to be told about the hazardous nature of many products the Chinese were sending our way. “It would take a great deal of work, but if a group of reporters were to do a story, a book, on all of the potential problems Chinese products may cause, the nation would be well served,” were his exact words.
I didn’t have the contacts and credibility in the publishing world to change my whole way of life and dive into these murky waters, but boy, was he ever spot on. Any such book would be old news now, because a far-flung “team” of reporters have made headlines with news about poisonous dogfood, contaminated toothpaste, sicko seafood, and lately toxic toys. Lee had been worried about the toys. “Our
daughter works in a pediatrician's office and they have noticed an upswing in lead poisoning symptoms and tested blood levels and are seeing high levels of lead in kids that they KNOW do not live in houses that have lead,” he wrote.
Lee had his own example of the true cost of cheap goods: mirrors. When he wrote about our toxic orientations, he was president of two companies in the South, one making particle board and one making mirrors. The particle board was safe from overseas competition, he said, because it would cost too much to ship such a heavy but relatively low-cost commodity. But at the mirror factory, the Chinese were “after us,” he said.
“It is the same old story,” he wrote. “We Americans work at a decent wage and produce products that meet or exceed all governmental standards. The Chinese are sending in mirrors made with near slave labor using aluminum coating backed-up with paint whose lead content is 2.4 to 2.6 times our country's maximum limit.
“The problem is that our laws only affect the guy that ultimately takes the broken mirror to the dump years in the future. So, they can flood our market with the cheap stuff, and we'll pay the environmental bill years from now.
“We use silver and low lead content paint. In fact, we are 60% below EPA standards. Washington doesn't give a damn – we do not want to upset the Chinese.”
And the Chinese, though our largest source of imports, do not have a monopoly on environmental degradation. “I have been in 21 countries, mostly on business.” Lee said. “Without thinking very hard, I have seen pollution in both China, Russia, Taiwan and Malaysia that would turn your stomach.”
Here’s one I’m going to look into: apple juice. Have you tried to buy juice lately? Look at the label and you will probably find apple juice listed high up, even if it’s supposedly cranberry juice or peach juice, for instance. Juicy Juice used to be a trusted source—100 percent juice, not water as the first ingredient or lots of high-fructose corn syrup (which I’ll talk about in a later posting). Now it’s been taken over by Nestle. They still don’t add corn syrup or sugar or artificial flavors or preservatives, but here’s the list of ingredients for “All Natural 100 percent Grape: “apple juice, grape juice and pear juice (water, juice concentrates), natural flavors, ascorbic acid (vitamin C), citric acid.”
It’s apple juice, flavored with grape juice, folks. Why? Presumably because apple juice is a lot cheaper. And is that because it’s coming from China, where the trees are sprayed with who knows what that may have been banned in this country decades ago?
There’s a number on the Juicy Juice can for “Questions?” which I’m going to call: 800-510-6763, Monday-Friday 8 a.m.-8 p.m. I would be DELIGHTED to learn that only domestic apple juice goes into those cans, and will report that here—or will report that the person didn’t know and couldn’t provide me with a way to find out. By all means call, too, if you want, and please let me know how it turns out. As it says on the Juicy Juice can, “IT’S GOOD TO KNOW.”
Yearns, concerns, and stomach turns can be shipped to [email protected].
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