Why is the failure rate of faucets rising?

It is reported that Shanghai has conducted random inspections on the quality of faucets, and the unqualified rate has reached 40%. What causes such a low pass rate of faucets?

This is firstly caused by technological reasons. At present, many daily necessities are made of copper, iron, stainless steel and other materials. These materials contain heavy metal elements. If they are not handled properly, they may exceed the standard.

For example, the main elements of stainless steel include manganese, chromium, and nickel. In order to maintain corrosion resistance, stainless steel must contain a certain amount of chromium. If the chromium is handled improperly, it may cause excessive chromium. In the same way, improper handling of manganese may lead to excessive manganese.

The copper alloy used to make faucets contains traces of metal elements such as iron, aluminum, and lead. If there is no lead, it is difficult to form during casting. The higher the lead content, the easier the casting process. Therefore, copper faucets on the market generally contain a certain amount of lead. If the factory does not do a good job of removing lead during manufacturing, it will cause excessive lead.

Another reason is that the company’s technology and equipment are aging, causing trace elements to be uncontrollable. Usually, when the new equipment is first put into production, its products are qualified, but when the equipment is used for a long time, the products will exceed the trace elements. This situation cannot be repaired from a technical point of view and can only be replaced with new equipment, but some factories continue to use it to save money. This is a technical problem and also a cost problem.

A seller of bathroom equipment told reporters that most faucets on the market now have copper cores, but the quality varies. Faucets from small manufacturers and cheaper prices are likely to exceed the lead. This is because some manufacturers do not buy standard brass alloys in order to control costs, but purchase cheap lead brass as raw materials from small workshops. This kind of lead brass tends to have a high lead content, but the price is only half of the brass alloy.

How to distinguish inferior faucets from the price? An industry insider told reporters that a copper faucet with formal craftsmanship should cost more than one hundred yuan, while a faucet worth tens of yuan is likely to use lead brass.

“Compared to large products, faucets worth tens of yuan are really not worth spending so much time and energy to choose one by one, and will not pay attention to the problem of excessive lead content.” A Shanghai citizen who is decorating his home told reporters.

In this regard, some people in the industry said that domestic consumers did not pay enough attention to the quality and safety of faucets, which also gave many unqualified and low-quality faucets an opportunity.