True or false. Are the products sold on Shein and Temu dangerous for your health?

Phone chargers, jewelry, toys for children under three years old: a UFC-Que Choisir investigation reveals the dangerousness of the items sold on Shein, but also on its Chinese rival Temu.

A figure has been relayed for several days. It was, moreover, taken up on franceinfo, Wednesday November 5, by Pascal Demurger, co-president of the Impact France movement and general director of Maif, guest on 8.30 franceinfo. “On the Shein platform, around 70% of the items offered are simply dangerous“, he says. This is not entirely accurate. This figure, 69% to be very precise, comes from a investigation conducted by UFC-Que Choisir. This very detailed survey has been carried out since the beginning of 2025 both on Shein, but also on Temu, another Chinese resale platform. But this percentage corresponds to products that do not comply with European Union rules in their entirety, in particular due to lack of labeling. Please note, this does not mean that the items sold by Shein and Temu are not dangerous for your health. The correct figure, which nevertheless remains very impressive, is 57%.

With three other consumer associations located in Belgium, Denmark and Germany, UFC-Que Choisir simply placed an order on these two platforms. Three categories of articles have been selected, those which are most requested for customer returns. We’re talking about phone chargers, toys for children under three and jewelry. The objects then underwent chemical, mechanical and electrical tests. The process is very close to that practiced by fraud repression.

The dangers for consumers are worrying. Burn, for starters, with chargers sometimes overheating to over 100 degrees. These poorly designed products can also cause an electric shock. Of the 54 chargers purchased for this study, only two are up to standard. Another major risk : suffocation. Toys for children under three years old, very popular at the end of the year, are not up to standard. Only 4% of those purchased on Temu are, 0% on Shein. But above all, they contain dangerous substances and their size is too small. Concretely, your child can choke on it.

Despite everything, these products are imported into France. Fraud control tries to act with random tests carried out upstream. Even if these platforms are well in their sightsas the DGCCRF confirms to us, the number of references to check is immense.

At airports, customs officers are faced with the arrival of millions of small packages: 12 million per day in the European Union. There were 4.6 billion in total in 2024.