Search the Community

Heard from friends this plant is dangerous http://shuangxingfu.blogspot.sg/2010/06/is-zz-plant-poisonous.html popular plant amongst Chinese and elderly my neighbour also have such plant...everyday walk pass

Just saw in news that Shin Ramen has been recalled and is under test for di-isononyl phthalate (DINP). I took notice of this because NTUC and Carrefour has been putting this on promotion pretty often Read this http://www.straitstimes.com/BreakingNews/S...ory_678784.html Please also post any food that is not safe for consumption in this thread

This article appeared in the papers today. Quite unusual, NEA had to go to court to ACQUIT the company they wanted to charge..... http://www.singaporelawwatch.sg/slw/headlinesnews/37420-nea-asks-court-to-acquit-firm-booked-over-toxic-material.html?utm_source=rss%20subscription&utm_medium=rss NEA asks court to 'acquit' firm booked over 'toxic' material THE National Environment Agency (NEA) has asked a court to effectively acquit a firm that the agency had booked last year for moving harmful material illegally. Galaxy Logistics had faced a fine of up to $30,000 for transporting a hazardous chemical outside approved hours. Without elaborating, the NEA prosecutor had asked a district court on Feb 5 to grant Galaxy a discharge amounting to an acquittal. In reply to queries from The Straits Times, NEA said an offence involving a few parties had been committed as hazardous substances were found to have been transported outside stipulated hours. NEA did not specify who the other parties were but said: "Galaxy Logistics was charged for its role in the offence but NEA has withdrawn the charge based on further evidence. NEA is continuing with its investigations and will take appropriate legal action. Public safety remains our paramount concern." However, Galaxy's defence counsel Christopher Bridges said he did not produce any new evidence in the pre-trial conferences. Instead, he had argued that the prosecution had not been able to provide any legislation that specifically stated that the chemical transported was a hazardous material. According to court documents, Galaxy was transporting a detergent known as Divosan Active SU 388 VTS in a truck along Pioneer Road just past midnight on Oct 2, 2012. The detergent contains peracetic acid, which NEA said was hazardous. NEA issued a summons to the firm in May last year for moving the material outside the prescribed hours of between 7am and 7pm. Galaxy was alleged to have committed an offence as NEA said peracetic acid was listed as hazardous in the Second Schedule of the Environmental Protection and Management Act (EPMA) as well as the Schedule of Environmental Protection and Management (Hazardous Substances) Regulations. However, Mr Bridges said there was no reference to peracetic acid in both lists. He also said it would be unreasonable to read "organic peroxides" in the EPMA to include all types of organic peroxides. There were different classes of organic peroxides and "it would not be Parliament's intention to include non-hazardous organic peroxides into the purview of the regulations and the EPMA", he said. The charge was "too arbitrary and hence defective as peracetic acid is not clearly and explicitly listed... as a hazardous substance", he added.

Recently saw the news about BMW and Audi in china having this toxic gas in the car from the plastic interior. Copy this from a Malaysia forum ;- Hi! I'm from Malaysia and I own a Hyundai Getz 1.3 from 2004 Dec, first hand owner. It was a fully imported one from Korea. I have been having the said problem since few years back. The door handles (all 4) started to melt away around 4 years ago. Initially I thought it was due to oil from the mechanics who serviced my car but I later realized that they are actually the plastic melting away. I replaced all 4 handles around 2 years ago. But soon after that I realized all other plastic/vinyl interiors of my cars have also started to melt. The current status is such that the entire dashboard and the sideboards are sticky, with the middle portion that houses the radio player and aircon outlet melting away quite badly such that my nails get stained very easily (almost every day when I fiddle with the controls). After the recent brouhaha about plasticizer contamination in air and dioxin (a carcinogen / cancer causing agent) released by plastics etc... I started to get very worried about the amount of toxic chemicals that could have been released into my car and hence being breathed in by me and my baby so I made a complaint to Hyundai customer service. They reluctantly sent 2 personnel over to take some photos of the affected parts and asked me some questions. The customer service officer then told me that she is agreeable that it's the quality and it cannot be due to any mishandling by me. But after taking more than a month to "investigate", they came back today saying that my claim is rejected and that the plastic melting was "probably" caused by the application of chemicals such as polisher on the vinyl surface without any scientific proof. I am totally not satisfied with such a claim because I am a lady driver who knows nothing about car maintenance, much less to polish my car. I also own other cars before this and I have been handling my Getz the same way I did with the other cars, same goes with my husband cars but this never happened before. Even my 8 year old kancil prior to this car and my hubby's ex proton wira which was >10 yr old then and his current Honda Civic which is 5 year old do not have this problem! To be honest, I do not wish to own this car any longer and am now looking at changing to another car because I am gravely concerned about my health and also the health of those around me. Who knows how much plasticizer or dioxin or whatever chemicals have I been breathing in in the last 6 over years!? But I cannot satisfactorily stop at just this because it has grave health implications and I really want to find out whether it is a quality problem or simply mishandling as claimed. Anyone having this problem I would highly appreciate that you share and also perhaps enlighten me what could have gone wrong.

I am in a bind at the moment. My GF has a rather critical friend who has been giving her "advice" and "insight" into our relationship. To be very blunt, her "advice" sounds more like poison darts. I can sense that my GF is somewhat affected and feel that such comments can slowly wreck a relationship over time. Any relationship guru can give advice that don't involve me strangling the toxic friend?

Can u guys believe wat this doo dah is saying? Unbelievable!!! Stop buying their products. Toxic toy story sparks major scare Supermarkets and major retailers in Singapore are scrambling to recall more toys after a national survey revealed that half of 50 toys available on shelves contained chemicals which can be harmful to children. The survey done by the Consumers Association of Singapore (Case) revealed on Monday that 23 out of the 50 toys tested were found to contain excessive amounts of lead and phthalates, a chemical commonly added to plastics to increase durability and flexibility. All of the toxic toys were made in China, and some even had the

Very digestible for layman like me.... Rest of videos also very good. http://marketplace.publicradio.org/videos/...ic_assets.shtml

Really pathetic....wonder any bro here married one ? http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/finance...toxic-wife.html

China's factories do not have the means to dispose of the hazardous waste generated in the manufacture of polysilicon panels By ARIANA EUNJUNG CHA IN GAOLONG, CHINA THE first time that Li Gengxuan saw the dump trucks from the nearby factory pull into his village, he couldn't believe what happened. Stopping between the cornfields and the primary school playground, the workers dumped buckets of bubbling white liquid onto the ground. Then they drove right back through the gates of their compound without a word. This ritual has been going on almost every day for nine months, Mr Li and other villagers said. In China, a country buckling with the breakneck pace of its industrial growth, such stories of environmental pollution are not uncommon. But the Luoyang Zhonggui High-Technology Co, here in the central plains of Henan Province near the Yellow River, stands out for one reason: It's a green energy company, producing polysilicon destined for solar energy panels sold around the world. But the byproduct of polysilicon production - silicon tetrachloride - is a highly toxic substance that poses environmental hazards. 'The land where you dump or bury it will be infertile. No grass or trees will grow in the place . . . It is like dynamite ) it is poisonous, it is polluting. Human beings can never touch it,' said Ren Bingyan, a professor at the School of Material Sciences at Hebei Industrial University. The situation in Mr Li's village points to the environmental trade-offs that the world is making as it races to head off a dwindling supply of fossil fuels. Forests are being cleared to grow biofuels like palm oil, but scientists argue that the disappearance of such huge swaths of forests is contributing to climate change. Hydropower dams are being constructed to replace coal-fired power plants, but they are submerging whole ecosystems under water. Unexpected consequences Likewise in China, the push to get into the solar energy market is having unexpected consequences. With the prices of oil and coal still high, policymakers around the world are looking at massive solar farms to heat water and generate electricity. For the past four years, however, the world has been suffering from a shortage of polysilicon - the key component of sunlight-capturing wafers - driving up prices of solar energy technology and creating a barrier to its adoption. With the price of polysilicon soaring from US$20 per kg to $300 per kg in the past five years, Chinese companies are eager to fill the gap. In China, polysilicon plants are the new dotcoms. Flush with venture capital and with generous grants and low-interest loans from a central government touting its efforts to seek clean energy alternatives, more than 20 Chinese companies are starting polysilicon manufacturing plants. The combined capacity of these new factories is estimated at 80,000 to 100,000 tons - more than double the 40,000 tons produced in the entire world today. But Chinese companies' methods for dealing with waste haven't been perfected. Because of the environmental hazard, polysilicon companies in the developed world recycle the compound, putting it back into the production process. But the high investment costs and time, not to mention the enormous energy consumption required for heating the substance to more than 1,800 degrees Fahrenheit for the recycling, have discouraged many factories in China from doing the same. Like Luoyang Zhonggui, other solar plants in China have not installed technology to prevent pollutants from getting into the environment or have not brought those systems fully online, industry sources say. 'The recycling technology is of course being thought about, but currently it's still not mature,' said Shi Jun, a former photovoltaic technology researcher at the Chinese Academy of Sciences. Mr Shi, chief executive of Pro- EnerTech, a start-up polysilicon research firm in Shanghai, said that there's such a severe shortage of polysilicon that the government is willing to overlook this issue for now. 'If this happened in the United States, you'd probably be arrested,' he said. An independent, nationally accredited laboratory analysed a sample of dirt from the dump site near the Luoyang Zhonggui plant at the request of The Washington Post. The tests show high concentrations of chlorine and hydrochloric acid, which can result from the breakdown of silicon tetrachloride and do not exist naturally in soil. 'Crops cannot grow on this, and it is not suitable for people to live nearby,' said Li Xiaoping, deputy director of the Shanghai Academy of Environmental Sciences. Wang Hailong, secretary of the board of directors for Luoyang Zhonggui, said that it is 'impossible' to think that the company would dump large amounts of waste into a residential area. 'Some of the villagers did not tell the truth,' he said. However, Mr Wang said that the company does release a 'minimal amount of waste' in compliance with all environmental regulations. 'We release it in a certain place in a certain way. Before it is released, it has gone through strict treatment procedures.' Yi Xusheng, the head of monitoring for the Henan Province Environmental Protection Agency, said that the factory had passed a review before it opened, but that 'it's possible that there are some pollutants in the production process' that inspectors were not aware of. He said that the agency would investigate. High hopes In 2005, when residents of Mr Li's village, Shiniu, heard that a new solar energy company would be building a factory nearby, they celebrated. The impoverished farming community of roughly 2,300, near the eastern end of the Silk Road, had been left behind during China's recent boom. In a country where the average wage in some areas is US$200 a month, many of the village's residents make just US$200 a year. They had high hopes that their new neighbour would jump-start the local economy. The Luoyang Zhonggui factory grew out of an effort by a national research institute to improve on a 50-year-old polysilicon refining technology pioneered by Germany's Siemens. Last year, the factory was estimated to have produced less than 300 tons of polysilicon, but it aims to increase that tenfold this year - making it China's largest operating plant. It is a key supplier to Suntech Power Holdings, a solar panel company whose founder Shi Zhengrong recently topped the list of the richest people in China. Made from the Earth's most abundant substance - sand - polysilicon is tricky to manufacture. It requires huge amounts of energy, and even a small misstep in the production can introduce impurities and ruin an entire batch. The other main challenge is dealing with the waste. For each ton of polysilicon produced, the process generates at least four tons of silicon tetrachloride liquid waste. When exposed to humid air, silicon tetrachloride transforms into acids and poisonous hydrogen chloride gas, which can make people who breathe the air dizzy and can make their chests contract. While it typically takes companies two years to get a polysilicon factory up and running properly, many Chinese companies are trying to do it in half that time or less, said Richard Winegarner, president of Sage Concepts, a California-based consulting firm. As a result, Prof Ren of Hebei Industrial University said, some Chinese plants are stockpiling the hazardous substances in the hopes that they can figure out a way to dispose of it later. 'I know these factories began to store silicon tetrachloride in drums two years ago,' he said. Pro-EnerTech's Mr Shi says that other companies - including Luoyang Zhonggui - are just dumping wherever they can. 'Theoretically, companies should collect it all, process it to get rid of the poisonous stuff, then release it or recycle. Zhonggui currently doesn't have the technology. Now they are just releasing it directly into the air,' said Mr Shi, who recently visited the factory. Bleak situation He estimated that Chinese companies are saving millions of dollars by not installing pollution recovery. He said that if environmental protection technology is used, the cost to produce one ton is approximately US$84,500. But Chinese companies are making it at US$21,000 to US$56,000 a ton. In sharp contrast to the gleaming white buildings in Zhonggui's new gated complex in Gaolong, the situation in the villages surrounding it is bleak. About a year ago, residents of Mr Li's village, which begins about 50 yards from the plant, noticed that their crops were wilting under a dusting of white powder. Sometimes, there was a hazy cloud up to three feet high near the dumping site; one person tending crops there fainted, several villagers said. Small rocks began to accumulate in kettles used for boiling tap water. Each night, villagers said, the factory's chimneys released a loud whoosh of acrid air that stung their eyes and made it hard to breath. 'It's poison air. Sometimes it gets so bad, you can't sit outside. You have to close all the doors and windows,' said Qiao Shi Peng, 28, a truck driver who said that he worries about his one-year-old son's health. The villagers said that the most obvious evidence of the pollution is the dumping, up to 10 times a day, of the liquid waste into what was formerly a grassy field. Eventually, the whole area turned white, like snow. The worst part, said Mr Li, 53, who lives with his son and granddaughter in the village, is that 'they go outside the gates of their own compound to dump waste'. 'We didn't know how bad it was until the August harvest, until things started dying,' he said. Early this year, one of the villagers put some of the contaminated soil in a plastic bag and went to the local environmental bureau. They never got back to him. Zhang Zhenguo, 45, a farmer and small businessman, said that he has a theory as to why: 'They didn't test it because the government supports the plant.' - LAT-WP Researchers Wu Meng and Crissie Ding contributed to this report

PARIS - FIRST tainted milk, now toxic chairs from China. Customers in France who bought Chinese-made recliners are complaining of stinging allergic rashes and infections. One customer, Ms Caroline Morin, said on Friday she was stunned to learn the chair she bought in December appears to have caused the skin problems she says she suffered for months. The French distributor, Conforama, warned clients in July that some of the chairs and sofas presented an allergy risk 'in rare cases.' It has withdrawn them from sale and now says the health problems were linked to an anti-fungal chemical in the chairs. The affair gained attention this week following French media reports exposing problems suffered by people who bought the chairs. One was Ms Dolores Ennrich, who says that because of long-term illness she spent a lot of time sitting in the recliner she purchased in March 2007. She says she suffered painful eczema and skin infections on her left thigh, back and left arm that put her in a hospital for 12 days and led doctors to prescribe repeated courses of antibiotics. 'It went away, it came back, it went away. That went on for more than a year,' she told wires agencies. 'It is very painful.' Conforama says it has severed its commercial ties with the Chinese supplier, Linkwise, and told its other suppliers to no longer use the chemical, dimethyl fumarate, to prevent mold. Linkwise is based in the manufacturing hub of Dongguan in southern China. A man who answered the phone at the company said on Friday that it is working with the Chinese government's quality inspection watchdog to investigate the problem. He would not give details, his name or title. Floods of cheap Chinese products on world markets have also been accompanied in recent years by scares over poor quality, particularly involving food. The latest Chinese product crisis involves baby formula made from milk powder tainted with the industrial chemical melamine. It has been blamed for the deaths of four babies and illnesses in 6,200 others in China. Previous scandals involved contaminated seafood, toothpaste and a pet food ingredient, also tainted with melamine, blamed for the deaths of dogs and cats in the United States. This milk powder scandal is really nothing new. It happened in 2004 but it wasn't taken seriously maybe it because that time less casualities?? 'Chinese, it's really dangerous. There's the chairs. The milk ....' said Ms Ennrich. 'We pay less but there are consequences.' China will continue to be world manufacturer so we hv to be a smart consumer. Alot of manufacturing coy are moving their plants to PRC. Normally, just one sachet of the anti-mould chemical is meant to be inserted into the chairs, but some contained as many as 10, said a Conforama spokesman, Stephanie Mathieu. She said the Chinese firm told Conforama that 'as it was the monsoon season they decided that they needed to put more sachets in.' Conforama said it sold 38,000 of the Linkwise chairs and that customers have so far returned 800 of them. Le Parisien newspaper, which has covered the case extensively this week, said the French Finance Ministry's market regulator, which polices consumer safety, is investigating to check that everything possible was done to protect clients. Ms Morin said she didn't make the connection between her skin problems and her recliner until she got a letter from Conforama in July. 'The chair has been out of my house for a month, and I feel a bit better, but I still have problems,' she said. A rash of cases have cropped up in Britain, too. British attorney Christian Shotton said his law firm, Russell, Jones & Walker, is representing 1,300 people who bought Linkwise recliners and sofas from British retailers and who are suing for compensation. He said there have been other cases in Sweden and Finland. 'Some of the children, some of the babies, are covered head to toe, in burns, rashes and infections,' Mr Shotton said. 'Some of the people sit on the sofa for 15 minutes and it looks like they have been out in the sun all day.' -- AP

http://www.channel4.com/4car/news/news-sto...p?news_id=15936 A US organisation called the Ecology Center has compiled a list of the most toxic car cabins - those made with materials that release chemical emissions. The plastics used in some car cabins, and man-made fabrics used for carpets or seat covers, can emit substances such as bromine, chlorine, mercury and even arsenic. Worst offenders were the Nissan Versa, Chevrolet Aveo, Scion xB, Kia Rio, Suzuki Forenza, Kia Spectra, Subaru Forester, Chevrolet Express, Hyundai Accent and Chevrolet Silverado: unsurprisingly, a list dominated by cheap entry-level compact cars. Least toxic were the Chevrolet Cobalt, Chrysler PT Cruiser, Honda Odyssey, Volvo V50, Suzuki Aerio, Acura RDX, BMW X3, Nissan Frontier, Toyota Matrix and Volvo S40.