$600,000 Worth of Unsafe Children’s Sleepwear Seized

Federal customs and consumer safety officials said Tuesday that they seized $600,000 worth of imported children’s sleepwear at ports in Los Angeles and San Francisco because the merchandise failed to meet flammability standards.

The seizures represent the third portion of a surveillance campaign by the Customs Service and the Consumer Product Safety Commission to intercept imported products at U.S. docks instead of the more painstaking and less successful method of inspecting retail stores.

Previous Operations

In two previous operations, dangerous imported toys and mislabeled or overloaded fireworks had been seized by the agency on the West Coast and in other American cities. In response to the fireworks seizures, the Chinese government suspended export production of firecrackers until quality control could be improved, according to sources familiar with the Chinese fireworks industry.

Since 1974, children’s sleepwear sold in the United States has been required to meet flammability standards. Basically, this prohibits cotton or cotton-blend sleepwear and requires synthetics that will cease to burn once a flame has been removed from the material. Product labeling declaring that clothing meets this standard is optional, but officials believe virtually all domestic manufacturers comply.

The product safety commission estimates that close to 100 American children under 15 are treated each year in hospital emergency rooms for sleepwear-related burn injuries and that five children die each year in incidents “associated with ignition of children’s clothing.”

Commission Chairman Terrence Scanlon said surveillance operations were established at ports in Los Angeles and San Francisco out of concern that a significant portion of imported sleepwear--which now accounts for one-third of the children’s sleepwear sold in this country--was not complying with the federal standard.

Customs officials said 216,000 pieces of sleepwear on 16 shipments from Hong Kong, China, Singapore, Taiwan and Chile were seized between May 23 and 27. The merchandise seized in Los Angeles was headed for importers in Commerce, Monterey Park and Alhambra and the F. W. Woolworth Co. in New York.

Merchandise to Be Destroyed

Scanlon said the merchandise will be destroyed and the importers will be assessed a penalty equal to the domestic value of the sleepwear, which averages about $3 per piece. The penalty can be reduced if the importer can prove ignorance of the law.

The product safety commission has been criticized by consumer groups in recent years for being reluctant to impose bans on potentially dangerous toys and other products. Scanlon has said in previous interviews that the commission must be careful about banning products to avoid costly lawsuits.

However, in discussing the surveillance program Tuesday, the chairman praised the operation’s effectiveness and said his agency and the Customs Service intend to increase such seizures.

“The new dockside approach is more efficient and effective in intercepting imported illegal children’s sleepwear before it reaches the hands of consumers,” he said. “We have seized more items in the last 12 months (among toys, fireworks and sleepwear) than all the goods that were returned (by consumers) in all the commission-mandated product recalls in the 17-year history of the commission.”

In the 1970s, when manufacturers began complying with the federal sleepwear flammability standard, they used a chemical called Tris. However, the government banned Tris in 1977 when it was found to have carcinogenic properties.