Deadly Duds: Asos Pulls Radioactive Belt
Sometimes studs can be dangerous. Case in point? The studded peplum leather belt from UK-based fashion online retailer ASOS. The belts tested positive by the U.S. Border Patrol for the radioactive element Cobalt-60, according to a report published Tuesday in the The Guardian. The belt in question was stopped at customs, on it's way into the States. It didn't get very far.
A spokesman for ASOS released the following statement: "A product supplied to ASOS did not meet UK health and safety standards. ASOS worked with all relevant authorities and undertook a precautionary product recall, in line with our high standards of quality and customer care. No other ASOS product lines are affected."
According to the Daily Beast, the recall was voluntary and the toxicity levels were low enough that you'd have to wear the belt for 500 hours to really start to worry.
Why you would wear a studded peplum belt for 500 hours? Don't ask. How the heck did Cobalt-60 become embedded into such a fashionable item? That's also tough to answer. An internal report obtained by The Guardian, points to the hundreds of metal studs stippled onto the belt. Then it gets technical:
"Unfortunately, this incident is quite a common occurrence," reports the internal document entitled, incidentally, Project Purple Flower. "India and the far east are large consumers of scrap metal for their home and foreign markets. During the refining process of these metals, orphaned radioactive sources are sometimes accidentally melted at the same time. This in turn [contaminates the process] and traps the radioactivity in the metal as an alloy or in suspension,"
And that's not the end of that. ASOS is now demanding money from the India based supplier Haq International claiming this is where the belts came from. Haq International says that the radioactive belts did not come from them. While 49 belts have been purchased, it's not clear if buyers have returned the belt since the recall.
Until it's figured out exactly where the materials in the belt originated from, we'll just go ahead and shelve our studded duds for awhile.
