With the recent news on all the safety recalls on "made in China" items, just wondering if the make up items, especially drugstore lines that are made in China are safe to use everyday? Your thoughts are appreciated!

__________________
The secret of living well is not in having all the answers but in pursuing unanswerable questionsin good company

i do not think it's fair to treat all "made in china" items as "health hazard". a lot of companies manufacturing their goods in china because of the cost, and some of them actually instruct the manufacturers to ignore the health risks.

i work for a canadian based PCB import company, they have a production line in china. most of the product are sold to Europe, so every board the company makes is strictly lead-free, which is required in EU, but no north america. almost every day we get calls asking if we can reduce the price if they do not require lead-free. a lot of them go as far as telling us "i don't care about the quality as long as it's cheap" (that's a quote, i did not re-phrase that). we always say no in that case, but i'm sure a lot of companies would agree to reduce the quality.

the safety recalls actually scared a lot of our customers in the states, some companies now use a Taiwan agency to buy boards from us, then repackage them in Taiwan, so they can be sold as "made in taiwan" instead of "made in china"

so i guess, the quality of "made in china" goods can vary a lot, it will be fine as long as you stick with the "reputable" brands/importers. MAC 182 brushes are made in china, but we still love it, right?

while i would hope that the cosmetic houses have strict enough quality control on items made in china to ensure this wouldn't be an isssue, it really worries me about what could actually be in all those counterfeit products that originate out of china. they certainly waren't being made to any quality control standards.

__________________
Deafness doesn't prevent composers hearing the music. It prevents them hearing the distractions.
(from Soul Music)

N15 · red hair · green eyes

You've raised some great points. I have to say I am hesitant to purchase certain products such as fruits and vegetables because I do not think they have the same strict regulation when it comes to pesticide use. With make up its less of a concern for me, I think there are many decent made in China products out there but there reputation has certainly been damaged with all the recalls we've heard about.

This is slightly off topic but I have to say this "tainted Made in China" problem is a GLOBAL problem. And by that I mean many of the coporations that have used Chinese products without proper due dilligence have been very quick and smart by turning around and pointing the finger at the Chinese sources. I am not siding with the shady merchants in China but I think there is some major lack of ethics and/or quality control by these corporations. It's the ol' turn a blind eye for profit. I mean if you can get a raw material at 1/10th of the cost compared to else where shouldn't alarm bells go off?? Until corporations, governments & consumers work together to set standards and more stingent regulations we will continue to see this problem.

__________________
...as God is my witness they're not going to lick me. I'm going to live through this and when it's all over, I'll never be hungry again.