Asos radioactive belts

Asos radioactive belts, Women's leather belts sold by the fashion website ASOS have been recalled after the metal studs in them were found to be radioactive.

About 50 of the belts, retailing at £28, are known to have been bought from the company.

They were made using cheap contaminated scrap metal in India.
The peplum leather belts, which tested positive for Cobalt-60, could injure people if worn for more than 500 hours - and are currently in a radioactive storage facility, an internal company report said.

It said that one of the belts tested positive after being pulled by U.S. border control officers, which led to them being withdrawn across the world reported The Guardian.

The firm issued a recall in January, but details have slipped out only now and ASOS cannot say how many have been returned.

But the number of studded belts - which were described in the report called Project Purple Flower as being unsuitable for ‘for public use or possession’ - that have been returned is not yet known.

The report, which was produced by an external regulator, said that the incident is ‘quite a common occurrence’ and that during the refining process of scrap metal, ‘orphaned radioactive sources are sometimes accidentally melted at the same time’.

This contaminates the process and ‘traps the radioactivity in the metal as an alloy or in suspension’.

Haq International, the Indian group which the firm said supplied the belts, has been supplying Asos for more than a year - and allegedly sold 641 radioactive belts to them, reported The Guardian.

The firm had withheld £64,000 owed to the supplier’s boss Faizan Haq, who said his factory has had to be shut for five months.

He said that this has left 18 Indian workers unemployed at the Royal Ascot Leather factory in Uttar Pradesh - and that his car has had to be sold so he can hire a legal team.

Asos has since offered to pay Mr Haq £24,000 of the £64,000 he is owed, but he told MailOnline: ‘There's no business left, I'm just sitting at home. It's bad and it’s a financial headache.

An Asos spokesman said in a statement emailed to MailOnline: ‘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.

‘Asos continues to work with the relevant regulatory authorities and is in dialogue with the supplier and the factory workers involved to ensure a satisfactory outcome.’

The Guardian also reported that Mr Haq has been refused permission to inspect the goods.

But the Asos spokesman said it had also been restricted from inspecting the belts due to 'standard regulatory procedure' on the part of U.S. authorities.