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Children’s products sold in South Korea by Chinese online shopping giant Shein contained toxic substances at levels hundreds of times above acceptable thresholds, Seoul city authorities said on Tuesday.
Based in Singapore, Shein has enjoyed strong popularity in recent years by offering a wide selection of fashionable clothing and accessories at low prices.
This explosive growth has prompted increased scrutiny of its business practices and safety standards, including in the European Union and South Korea – where Seoul city authorities have conducted weekly inspections of items sold by platforms like Shein, Temu and AliExpress.
In the latest, they screened eight products sold by Shein, including children’s shoes, leather bags and a belt, and found that several contained large amounts of phthalates, chemicals used to soften plastics.
One pair of shoes contained 428 times the permitted levels of phthalates and three bags had quantities up to 153 times the limit, the municipality said.
Phthalates have been known for decades to cause hormonal disruptions. Their presence has been linked to obesity, heart disease, certain cancers and fertility problems.
A Seoul city official, Park Sang-jin, told AFP that he had requested the removal of these products from sale and that, since the city began inspections in April, most of the platforms complied with these requests.
Shein “takes product safety very seriously“, one of its spokespersons told AFP.
The company requires its suppliers to comply with its controls and standards, and works with international agencies to ensure safety standards are met, it said.
“As soon as we become aware of a complaint“, he added, “we immediately remove the product(s) from our site“, the time to conduct an investigation and take the necessary measures in the event of proven non-compliance.
So far, Seoul authorities said they had inspected 93 products and found that nearly half of them contained toxic substances.
In April, the European Union added Shein to its list of digital companies large enough to be subject to stricter safety rules, including measures to protect against dangerous products, particularly those that could be harmful to minors.
On May 22, a Belgian consumer association tested 25 children’s clothes purchased on the Shein platform. Many items contained at least one dangerous substance, including lead, she warns.
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