Turkey inspects textiles for carcinogenic elements

The Turkish ministries of economy and customs and trade have in recent years increased the number of inspections of imported textiles for presence of carcinogenic elements.

Over the last five years, government officials have seized an estimated 141,000 products containing carcinogenic elements that might trigger cancer, Daily Sabah reported.

In 2015 alone, around 14 billion imported textile, garment, shoe and leather products underwent carcinogen inspection, according to the Istanbul Ready-to-Wear and Confection Exporter Association (IHKIB). Of these, 2,608,145 products failed the inspection, and fines were imposed on various companies.

About 49 per cent of the products confiscated by the officials for containing carcinogenic substances were imported from Chinese companies.

However, consumer confidence on imported products has risen in the last five years. Consumers’ mistrust of imported products has decreased to 2.9 per cent in 2015 from 38.6 per cent in 2011.