Chinese Fireworks Recalls Raise Safety Concerns
Cox News Service
Saturday, June 30, 2007
BEIJING — Amid increasing concern over the safety of certain food and consumer products from China, the U.S. government has added — just in time for Independence Day — another potentially dangerous Chinese-made import to a growing list: fireworks.
The U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission on June 19 recalled 13,600 "300 Shot Saturn Missiles Battery Fireworks" and about 4,000 "March or Die Mine/Shell Fireworks Devices." The agency cited the possibility that the products could tip over or fire in unexpected directions, posing possible risk of burns or eye injuries.
Over the Fourth of July holiday, Americans are expected to set off some 200 million pounds of fireworks. The recall has raised concerns among parents and consumer groups about the safety of backyard fireworks, almost all of which are imported from China.
Eleven people died from fireworks-related injuries in the United States in 2006 and the commission estimated that 9,200 people were treated in emergency rooms for injuries, most of which occurred during the weeks around the Fourth of July weekend.
Chinese fireworks factories often hire unskilled workers and sometimes substitute unsafe materials to reduce costs and increase explosive power, Chinese experts said.
Hu Yongzheng, an explosives expert at Zhejiang Public Security College, said that shoddy fireworks were responsible for some of "dozens" of deaths each year in China. Before the Chinese New Year, Beijing confiscated at least 560 million substandard fireworks, more than four times the number confiscated last year, the Xinhua news agency reported.
Since July 2003, when the Consumer Product Safety Commission began to list the country of manufacture on its recall announcements, the agency has recalled 11 kinds of fireworks, all of them Chinese made.
Together, the recalls involved more than 200,000 individual fireworks for reasons including defective fuses, unstable containers, rockets packed with more explosives than are permitted by U.S. regulations, inaccurate labels that could cause consumers to launch aerial shells upside-down and devices that "can unexpectedly propel on the ground or unintentionally explode during use, posing a risk of burn injuries to consumers," the agency's recall announcements said.
The most recent recalls targeted fireworks imported by Far East Imports and Jake's Fireworks Inc., fireworks distributors based in Pittsburg, Kansas.
Messages left for executives at the two companies — which listed the same phone number on their recall announcements — were not returned. The Web site for Jake's Fireworks said the company "currently wholesales throughout the 48 contiguous states, Hawaii, Alaska, and several foreign nations."
John Nesbitt, founder of a group in Iowa called Ban Consumer Fireworks and Stop Fireworks Victimization, said people should heed the recent recalls.
"The use of all fireworks is a risk and the fact that some of them might be faulty raises that risk," he said.
The National Fire Protection Association, a Massachusetts-based nonprofit group promoting fire safety, said in an April report that the "trend in fireworks-related injuries has been mostly up since 1996."
But fireworks importers and industry groups say that a few recalls is normal in any large industry. They also say that the quality of Chinese-made fireworks has improved dramatically over the last decade as some American companies have improved oversight of Chinese factories.
In 1989, an industry-affiliated group set up the American Fireworks Standards Laboratory, a nonprofit organization based in Bethesda, Md., that works to improve the quality and safety of fireworks imported from China.
By working with Chinese manufacturers to ensure uniform quality and to test fireworks before they are shipped to the United States, the group has significantly improved the safety of fireworks, said John Rogers, the laboratory's executive director.
About three-quarters of the fireworks imported to the United States from China in the early 1990s did not meet U.S. government requirements, Rogers said. Recent government audits of fireworks pre-screened by the laboratory, which employs 52 full-time inspectors in China through a third-party company, found "a failure rate of something to the tune of 5 percent," he said.
And the number of fireworks-related injuries in the United States is the lowest ever recorded relative to the boom in recent years in the use of fireworks, Rogers added.
But Rogers and other industry insiders acknowledged that lax U.S. government monitoring, a fragmented Chinese market, and American companies intentionally ordering illegal fireworks continue to make some fireworks unsafe.
Between "75 and 80 percent" of American companies importing fireworks from China pay to have their fireworks tested by the American Fireworks Standards Laboratory, but other importers deliberately buy more powerful fireworks than are allowed under U.S. law, Rogers said.
Neither Jake's Fireworks nor Far East Imports hire America Fireworks Standards Laboratory to test their fireworks before exporting them to the United States, Rogers said.
Despite the seized fireworks, a lack of resources has made it difficult for the consumer safety commission, which is primarily responsible for imported fireworks, to improve compliance with American laws, experts said.
The agency employs about 100 investigators to inspect 15,000 kinds of products and budget cuts have led to a staff reduction of 10 percent since 2005, said Scott Wolfson, a spokesman for the commission.
Other American industries have also faced recent problems enforcing quality of Chinese imports.
In June, a New Jersey tire importer notified the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration that a Chinese company it had contracted to manufacture tires had failed to include a safety feature that helped prevent tire treads from separating, the Associated Press reported earlier this week.
The news followed earlier scares over a Chinese-made protein added to pet food, Chinese-made toothpaste and Chinese-made toys coated in paint containing lead, which can damage brain cells, particularly in children.
Overall, the number of Chinese-made products recalled in the United States has doubled over the last five years and so far this year China accounts for more than 60 percent of recalls, up from 36 percent in 2000.
Because of the rising number of recalled Chinese products, the Consumer Product Safety Commission "is working with the (Chinese) government to help them understand that there must be uniform compliance with (U.S.) standards," Wolfson said.
"The overarching message that we are sharing with all the appropriate stakeholders is that we need to build safety into the manufacture of products intended for the U.S. market," he said, adding that the agency is targeting fireworks, toys, cigarette lighters and electrical products because a "very high percentage" of them are made in China.
Fireworks Safety Tips from the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission:
— Never allow young children to play with fireworks.
— Make sure fireworks are legal in your area before buying or using them.
— Adults should always supervise fireworks activities, particularly sparklers, which burn at temperatures of about 2,000 degrees — hot enough to melt some metals.
— Never try to relight or pick up fireworks that have not fully functioned. Douse and soak with water and throw them away.
— Keep a bucket of water or a garden hose handy in case of fire or other mishap.
— Never carry fireworks in a pocket or shoot them off in metal or glass containers.