Hair Bands Made from Used Condoms in China?
Netlore Archive: Authorities in China have reportedly discovered instances of used and/or defective condoms being recycled to make cheap elastic hair bands.
Description: Forwarded email
Circulating since: Nov. 2007
Status: Mixed (see below)
Example:
Email contributed by Susan S., July 13, 2008:
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DON'T BUY CHINESE PRODUCTS CAMPAIGN ...it's for your own good anyway!
Beware - Hair bands!!! Beware when you are travelling to China or buying from Chinese stores in SA, just try to be careful when you are buying hairbands down the road who knows what it is made from?? 
These Hairbands were made from used condoms and threads. That was so disgusting, I would not want anyone to use them!! 
BEIJING (AFP) - Used condoms are being recycled into hair bands in southern China threatening to spread sexually-transmittable diseases they were originally meant to prevent, state media reported Tuesday In the latest example of potentially harmful Chinese-made products, rubber hair bands have been found in local markets and beauty salons in Dongguan and Guangzhou cities in southern Guangdong province, China Daily newspaper said. |
Analysis: Despite the repetition of these claims in more than one news source since November 2007, we have reason to be especially skeptical of one detail in particular — the claim that condoms converted into commercially-sold hair bands by manufacturers in China are (or were) used.
Where would all those used condoms come from?
Let's say the finished product is sold in packages of ten. For a miniscule manufacturing run of just 100 packages, you'd need 1,000 used condoms as raw material. Who collects those? Where do they collect them? How do they collect them? By rooting through random garbage cans one-by-one? Are people paid to do this? The whole thing stretches credulity.
What is plausible is that defective, unused condoms are being collected from manufacturers in bulk and repurposed to make hair bands on the cheap. And that, in fact, is what a reporter for the Guangzhou New Express found to be the case in a follow-up investigation after the initial November 11, 2007 news report was released. An unnamed Chinese condom manufacturer did confirm that the reprocessing of failed condoms into hair bands has long been standard practice in the industry.
Regrettably, though the original report raising alarms about used condoms in hair bands was picked up by China Daily, Agence France-Presse, and other news organizations around the world, the follow-up story was not.
That's one way urban legends are born.
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Sources and further reading:
China Recycling Used Condoms as Cheap Hair Bands
Agence France-Presse, 12 November 2007Outrage Over Use of Recycled Condoms
China Daily, 13 November 2007Used Condoms Winding Up in People's Hair
News.com.au, 13 November 2007Condom Hair Bands Continue Selling Well in Guangzhou, Dongguan
New Express (trans. by Google), 13 November 2007Rubber Bands Made Out of Used Condoms
Shanghai Star, 11 April 2002
Last updated: 09/30/08
