Chinese women rage about unsafe sanitary towels

IN RECENT years Chinese consumers have been duped by misbranded, shoddy condoms; tainted alcohol; 40-year-old meat and, in 2008, contaminated baby milk that killed four children and landed 50,000 in hospital. Knock-off brands of sanitary towels are the latest example of China’s enduring failure to keep products safe. In late October police arrested two suspects in Nanchang in the southern province of Jiangxi, accusing them of making some 10m pads since 2013 in a dirty workshop and packaging them with popular trademarks. Most were sold at small shops in the countryside.

Almost all women in China within a certain age-range worry about the quality of their pads—even legitimate ones sometimes fail safety tests. Sanitary towels are must-buy items for many Chinese tourists when they go abroad (along with Japanese toilet seats and designer handbags).