Hazardous Shoes - The Facts

http://members.tripod.com/~a_spring/indian.html

How consumers are deceived by shoe manufacturers and dealers

(translation from a German transcript of a TV report from the magazine 'PANORAMA', transmitted on Feb. 26, 1998 -
original German transcript can be found at: The NDR Archive - Panorama magazine - translation by: Andreas Spring)

 

Initial moderation by Patricia Schlesinger:

We like to read 'Made in Italy' on noble leather shoes. 'Made in Germany' will do as well. We take those fashionable items of footwear home, thinking that we just now purchased Italian chique, or German quality products. Products, not having anything to do with low-salary Third-World countries, children's labor, or environmental damage. But no matter whether noble brand names or cheap boots from mass production are concerned, many shoe manufacturers take part in a brand name and labelling swindle - with brutal effects.

Inge Altemeyer and Beate Greindl report about shoes which are hazardous to us as well, and which are sold bearing wrong labels.

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Beginning of film report:

Karstadt - a German dept. store chain. Only with a hidden camera are we able to film. It appears, as if we were after something illegal, some highly ob- noxious items being sold here. But this is just about shoes. Nevertheless: denial of permission to film here openly or to interview anyone. The same with the 'Schuhzentrum Reno', a catalogue-order and retail shoe dealing firm. The reason: products from India are hidden behind several Italian-sounding brand names - consumer decept, which no one on the part of the sales firms wishes to comment on.

Ambur district, India. A massive center of shoe manufacturing, and basically a giant sewer, contaminated by the exhaust of more than 700 tanneries (leather factories) covering about 50 sq. kilometers - the highest concentrated conglomeration of tanning firms worldwide. The highly toxic tanning exhaust would have to be expensively disposed of as toxic waste over here... but there it is simply dumped into the surrounding nature.

Fresh water all around Ambur is highly contaminated and poisoned, causing diseases among the people. especially diseases of the digestive system, and allergies. A people's initiative group is pointing out the dangers, and accusing the responsible firms.

Quote: P.S. Subramanian (Anti-leather campaign, Ambur)

"We had more than 1,500 cases of several diseases, which are most likely caused by the contamination and shortage of fresh water in this region. Hundreds of Cholera cases have been reported, with eight casualties, so far."
(end of quote)

The tanneries consume astronomical amounts of fresh water. The few water purification plants - if there are any, that is - are not even remotely capable of dealing with the masses of sewage left behind by those tanneries. The high concentration of toxic agents in the sewage do not leave any chance for a normal and regular purification circle to work there.

Quote: Jürgen Kross (Environmental research institute, Bremen (Germany))

"The question is, whether it is possible at all to have so many highly water-consuming production facilities on such small a space. Consequently, water purification will become entirely impossible."
(end of quote)

Large heaps of leather remains lie around in Tanner Town, Ambur. Germany is the largest import country for leather from Ambur. Whoever comes into this area is immediately surrounded by the nauseating, acrid tanning stench. And despite the environmental disaster, German shoe import firms still prefer to purchase leather from Ambur - the prices are conveniently low.

Quote: Norbert Dexheimer (German show import representative)

"At first, one is actually shocked... one almost cannot comprehend this. And you start asking yourself questions... However, I see it now from a slightly different point of view. There are many, many people here having only one working family member, providing the money for all to live on. And our orders of leather products enable us to grant many people a certain, comparingly high standard of living."
(end of quote)

For German shoe trade, the cheap workers here are highly profitable. They save even on safety measure at work... no gloves or protective masks against the toxic vapors are worn anywhere in the tanneries.

Deichmann (a German shoe store chain) imports shoes directly from India as well - about a million pairs every year. For example: the brands 'Easy Street', 'Casa- blanca' and 'Century' are all manufactured in Ambur - and especially those shoes are sold here at surprisingly low prices. Strange, however, that those shoes often carry a label reading 'Made in Italy' - but never 'Made in India'...

Quote: Helmut Merkel (Deichmann)

"It is quite customary, that shanks, the upper part of shoes, for example, are manufactured in India, then shipped to Italy, where an Italian manufacturer then fits all the components together to the finished product."
(end of quote)

And so, very easily, a shank from India has become a genuinely Italian shoe - even though it was only tacked together in Italy. The people in the street, buying shoes, are unaware of that deceipt, and the shoe sales industry profits highly from the good reputation of the 'Italian shoes' they are offering.

Quote: Female customers

*Well, Italian shoes are of course very elegantly worked and also are very comfortable to wear - very foot-friendly"

"I like them... they do not look as rough as the others, I think..."
(end of quotes)

Expensive and noble-brand shoes are affected by this labeling fraud as well... Twenty percent of all the leather shanks used to manufacture ladies' shoes in the German firm Gabor were manufactured in and imported from India. In Rosenheim (near Munich, Germany), those are then assembled. A sticker on the sole then reads 'Made in Germany'. Very cunning sales policy.

Quote: Gabor, sales representative:

"Take this fully plaited ladies' shoe, for instance... if we would fully manufacture this in Germany, you would have to pay DM 250.00 in shoe stores... By using shanks from India, this pair costs only DM 150.00"
(end of quote)

So, while Germany, as the country of final assembly, is named on stickers and labels, the actual country where the shoes are produced, India, is never referred to, as if the shoe industry over here has forgotten about it.

Quote: a reporter interviewing a customer

Reporter:	"Would you care about it, or not, if you knew that this particular shoe has been made in India, for instance?"
Customer:	"Of course I *would* care. Well, if children's labor and such things... I am normally very aware of such things!"

(end of quote)

In Ambur, tens of thousands of children are working in tanneries, too. The output of that production goes into the export - mostly to Germany. Just like the adults, the children are unprotected against the aggressive chemical agents used in tanning the raw hides, the toxic vapors and the dust. The tanneries, where sometimes more than 150 different chemicals are used, are the worst. At times, working here can be fatal: anthrax.

Quote: Laurence Surendra (toxicologist, Ambur):

"The anthrax virus, found sometimes in the raw animal hides, is almost at a hundred percent fatal! Mostly, the death is not causally connected to the tanneries, since it just happens too fast..."
(end of quote)

Due to the heat in India, the leather is laced with several preservative agents - chemicals, which are purchased at lowest prices possible, but also highly toxic and dangerous to the organism.

In the 'Prüfinstitut der deutschen Schuhindustrie' (testing institution of the German shoe industry) in Pirmasens, experts are regularly finding PCP, mercury, arsenic and chromate compounds in Indian leather. Only for PCP - Penta-Chloro- Phenole, a highly toxic, carcinogenic substance, officially forbidden in Germany - regular tests are run, although the other agents are partially even more dangerous!

Quote: Dr. Gerhard Nickolaus (Prüfinstitut der deutschen Schuhindustrie):

"Mercury compunds are increasingly used for preservation purposes on leather coming from Asian countries, and those are at least as hazardous as Chromate compounds..."

Reporter: "You mean you would not wear any shoes containing them...?"

"That is correct."
(end of quote)

Generally, consumers are unaware of the dangers of the unseen toxic substances in shoes. Those can be washed out of the leather by perspiration, and then enter the human body via the skin, and even cause cancer. New labels, issued by the European Community, are not bearing any warning, either, much to the chagrin of associations for the protection of consumers' rights, the so-called 'Verbraucherverbände'.

Quote: Bernhard Rosenkranz (Verbraucherzentrale Hamburg):

"The 'Verbraucherverbände' are demanding a sort of 'shoe passport', which shall contain all information about where the shoes were manufactured, and what was used in the production, what chemicals a shoes contains, etc."
(end of quote)

But such regulations would surely spoil the good sales and high profits of some shoe store chains. It is quite likely that some of the stores will have to change their advertizing slogans, for then they will most likely not be able to use something like:

Quote: shoe store ad:

"Kaum zu glauben - Markenschuhe so günstig - Deichmann"
(Unbelievable...! Genuine brands shoes at such low prices - Deichmann!)

end of filmed report

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Closing moderation, Patricia Schlesinger:
Cheap, but poisonous shoes for us... the real and only winners of such practice are those exploiting the almost inexhaustible potential of low-salary workers in Third-World countries worldwide, without any regard to health or environment, just minding their own profits.

(end of report)