> At one point in 2013, some Amazon employees began scanning randomly selected third-party products in Amazon warehouses for lead content, say people familiar with the tests. Around 10% of the products tested failed, one says. The failed products were purged, but higher-level employees decided not to expand the testing, fearing it would be unmanageable if applied to the entire marketplace, the people familiar with the tests say. Amazon declined to comment on the episode.
This crosses a higher threshold than many of the other anecdotes, it sounds like there’s an actual record of willful negligence.
What’s the likely big picture economic situation with Amazon? Is there any way to estimate where the bulk of fake goods are coming from and the money through Amazon is going to? China was mentioned several times in the article, is this a China problem, or actually bigger than that? Has Amazon formed a tunnel that primarily moves illegal low-quality product into the US and money out? Is Amazon the largest vector for foreign goods that are breaking US laws to be sold in the US, or is this an internet problem in general? I can’t think of other US retailers, even online, that I’m scared to shop at for fear of fake product.
There was a recent study that also had crossed a threshold of anecdotes [1]: "The Attorney General’s Office, in partnership with the Washington State Department of Ecology, tested children’s school supplies for harmful levels of lead and cadmium in 2017 and 2018. The tests targeted products the two agencies suspected might contain toxic metals. In total, two rounds of tests identified 51 products sold on Amazon.com that tested positive for illegal levels of lead and cadmium. In the first round of testing, 16 of the 43 products from Amazon tested positive for illegal levels of toxic metals. In the second round of tests, the two agencies found that 35 of 41 products examined exceed the legal limits. The Department of Ecology paid for the first round of testing and the Attorney General’s Office funded the second round. "
[1] https://www.atg.wa.gov/news/news-releases/ag-ferguson-amazon....
There's a stack of transforms here: All amazon stuff -> Things that a protective agency through highly-developed intuition suspects will be dangerous -> things actually found to be dangerous.
So it's bad news that they found dangerous things amongst a category of things that we don't want to be at all dangerous (children's school supplies). It's not surprising news that these agencies are pretty good at knowing in advance which children's school supplies are likely to be dangerous.
BTW the link doesn't bring up a specific article. It brings up a list of articles.
One wonders why the press release didn't say, Wash AG indicts school supply suppliers after joint AG-DoEcology investigation?
I agree. But it seems that they just did a reasonable thing - a quick search - bought products - tested - found 25-75% contaminated. While it should be zero. Yes, they did a reasonable search. But it is not like Amazon can't replicate that search.
The right thing to do here is to add automatic random sampling and control for lead/cadmium in the distribution facilities. And fix at least this bug, for real.
This crosses a higher threshold than many of the other anecdotes, it sounds like there’s an actual record of willful negligence.
What’s the likely big picture economic situation with Amazon? Is there any way to estimate where the bulk of fake goods are coming from and the money through Amazon is going to? China was mentioned several times in the article, is this a China problem, or actually bigger than that? Has Amazon formed a tunnel that primarily moves illegal low-quality product into the US and money out? Is Amazon the largest vector for foreign goods that are breaking US laws to be sold in the US, or is this an internet problem in general? I can’t think of other US retailers, even online, that I’m scared to shop at for fear of fake product.