Via the Something Awful Forums, by a poster called Heresiarch:
My wife is Brazilian, and often reads the news from there. I found this to be an interesting example of international capitalism at work.
It was discovered within the last few days that Império do Forro de Bolso, a Brazilian textile company, has been acquiring medical waste from American facilities and shipping it via containers to Suape (in the Brazilian state of Permanbuco).
They then sell the sheets and pillowcases in Santa Cruz do Capibaribe to manufacturing companies for use in making clothing, at about 8 $R a kilogram (about $4 a pound). These companies manufacture clothes for sale in Brazil and overseas.
Sources also report that the material was being sold as bedsheets directly to the public. Employees of the textile company claimed that they were having technical problems which prevented them from providing receipts.
This hasn't made any non-Brazilian news agencies, but for those who'd like to verify to the best of their ability:
Receita aciona Procuradoria contra lixo hospitalar em PE
Lixo hospitalar dos EUA é vendido no Nordeste
Empresa que recebeu lixo hospitalar espera mais carga de material suspeito
The below paragraph is translated by Heresiarch (the Something Awful Forums poster's) wife:
"The paperwork for the seized material reported that the cargo consisted of cotton textiles with manufacturing defects. However, upon inspection, tons of sheets, pillowcases, bath towels, robes, pajamas and baby clothes were found. Some of the material was bloodstained, and had printed identification from U.S. hospitals. There were also syringes, hospital gloves, catheters, gauze and bandages found among the material".
Heresiarch continues.
So far, forty-six tons of material have been apprehended, but it appears that this has been occurring for some time, and there's another fourteen shipping containers en route from an American company in South Carolina.
Obviously the Brazilian authorities are taking action, and the whole thing has been shut down, but the public health impact of this is literally incalculable, since there's no way to track how much of these materials have been sold to the public in their clothing, both in Brazil and overseas.
It's unknown if the US companies that sold and shipped this material were aware of what it was being used for, or if they did but thought it was being properly disinfected, but even if the US companies were unaware of the problem, can they be held responsible?
And if so, what can they be charged with beyond the falsification of shipping papers? (Serious question, for anyone who's more familiar with international law about this sort of thing.)
It's also interesting that we usually see (in the news anyway) first-world nations receiving defective goods from China and the like, which is the opposite of what's going on here.
We also see western companies dumping medical waste off the coast of Somalia and the like, but I haven't seen any examples before of it being sold to anyone like this.
This sort of international capitalism at work seems like it would fall under the auspices of some kind of trade organization (WTO?), but do any of them actually engage in regulation?
In short, whose responsibility is to keep this from happening, for the protection of both the public and local companies who may end up deceived about the source of their raw materials?
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