Photo: Nikos Pekiaridis / NurPhoto via AFP
A consumer advocate says testing has revealed some children's toys being sold by online shopping giant Temu are unsafe.
More than 160 products, including children's toys, have been tested by several European consumer groups in Germany, France, Denmark and Belgium.
The test sold through Temu and Shein found more than 60 percent of the products investigated from both online stores had failures.
The worst categories were products marketed as suitable for children younger than 3 years old and USB electronic chargers.
Consumer NZ research writer Belinda Castles told Midday Report the research showed some products failed safety testing.
"It was quite concerning actually. There was a number of failures," she said.
The products were tested against European Union (EU) standards and were tested for mechanical, chemical and electrical compliance.
Mechanical safety issues were found in 30 of the 54 toys tested, Castles said.
"They were looking for harmful substances, so chemicals that shouldn't be there, and also mechanical and electrical safety and labelling requirements. And what they found was that 18 of those 54 toys actually had high severity non-compliance issues," she said.
"So in a couple of cases, there was high levels of chemicals, there was lots of products that either had small bits that came off too easily, or sort of parts of the toy that were suffocation risk."
Two Temu products had chemical failures.
Formaldehyde was found in elevated levels in cloths from a toy tissue box. Formaldehyde was added to textiles to make them less likely to wrinkle. At high levels, it could cause allergies.
Another toy was found to be too loud, to the point where it could impair a child's hearing, Castles said.
Warning and compliance label issues were also found in 26 of the 27 Temu products, alongside all 27 Shein products tested.
"Although that's obviously not as serious as sort of the mechanical and the electrical failures, it's still a concern if they're not providing consumers with the correct information about how to use those products safely," Castles said.
A case study in the New Zealand Medical Journal (NZMJ) said surgeons at Tauranga Hospital had to remove part of the boy's bowel after he ate between 80 and 100 of the small but powerful magnets.
The magnets were banned in New Zealand.
The report by NZMJ claimed the magnets were purchased from Temu.
"It just highlights the real difficulty in these online international platforms. People are still able to buy from them," Castles said.
Consumer "strongly recommended" not purchasing children's toys and USB chargers from Shein and Temu.
In a statement, Temu said it took product safety very seriously and removed the products from sale and alerted respective sellers.
"Temu has a comprehensive quality control system in place to prevent, detect, and remove non-compliant products, including conducting physical inspections. We also work with top independent testing organisations to make sure products sold on Temu meet required standards," a spokesperson said.
"We remain committed to providing a safe and trustworthy shopping experience for all and to full compliance with EU product safety regulations."
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