Subtitles section Play video Print subtitles From poisons to road accidents, a lot of things in China can be deadly. Hi. Welcome to China Uncensored. I'm your host, Chris Chappell. Be sure to subscribe for the latest China news. The world is full of delightful deadly dangers. From natural disasters to disease, from toxic waste to toxic food. And China's certainly got its fair share of things that could kill you... eventually. So today, I bring you five things to look out for in China if you're not yet ready to meet Marx. Karl, not Groucho. Number 5 Tainted food. Now, I love Chinese food. Whether it's soup dumplings, or red-cooked pork, or hand-pulled noodles— there's no cuisine that tantalizes the taste buds like Chinese food. But when you eat Chinese food in China these days, well, you may be putting yourself at risk. I don't want to be alarmist here— you're probably not going to die, but you might wish you were dead. For example, if you're visiting China, you'll definitely want to try the street food. Just think of it like playing Russian roulette with your digestive system. Vendors may not washing things, or maybe they let meat sit around in the open for hours. Sometimes street food can be great. Other times, let's just say it can come back to bite you. And consider that some of the delicious foods that you may be eating might have been prepared using recycled gutter oil. “It's all in a day's work for this woman. She opens up a manhole cover and scoops out as much slop as she can.” According that Radio Free Asia report, business is so good, in just a few short years of scooping out gutter gunk, that woman made enough money to build a house. “Her slop eventually ends up at a processing plant like this one, where it's combined with other animal fat refuse, to create recycled cooking oil. Workers put the oil in barrels for delivery to restaurants and hotels.” Now that video is from 2013. So have things changed since then? Well, since at least 2010, Chinese authorities have repeatedly cracked down on the use of gutter oil, but there's no sign that it's gone. Especially since authorities have to keep ramping up the crackdown. Now you might think going to a Western restaurant like KFC or McDonald's would be safe— since they have higher standards. Well, not necessarily. A video surfaced in Chinese media a few years back, showing disgusting practices in a Shanghai food-processing factory that supplies ingredients to a lot of international restaurant brands. “It began with this grainy video shot by local TV, showing workers allegedly processing expired meat. Mixing raw and recycled meat, and pulling raw meat directly off the floor with their bare hands.” The plant supplied meat in several Chinese cities to McDonald's, Burger King, KFC, Pizza Hut, and Papa John's. Which I didn't even know they had in China. Food scandals in China are disturbingly common. From 'seriously mouldy' meals on Chinese trains... to kindergartens feeding kids 'rotten, worm-infested food'... restaurants and institutions may not be a safe haven of food safety in the least. A quality control and compliance service provider called Qima found that almost half of Chinese food-processing plants fail to meet internationally acceptable standards. The company conducted several thousand inspections, audits and tests on food-processing plants in China and found abnormal levels of pesticides, antibiotics, heavy metals, bacteria, or viruses that could put consumers at risk. The Qima's vice president said, “There are horror stories, obviously”... after the company published a report that 48% of the thousands of food processing plants in China did not meet the requirements set by Western food trading companies and retailers. Oh, and careful what you wash down your meals with, too, because... Number 4 Toxic drinks. The company that makes Jack Daniel's, Brown-Forman, estimates that around 30% of all alcohol in China is fake. But perhaps more shocking is a recent report that nearly 40% of Chinese people knowingly buy fake booze. Fake booze means it's not what the label says it is. It could be anything from a cheaper brand poured into a more expensive bottle, to straight-up poisonous bootleg liquor made in a bathtub. And in some cases, fake booze can kill you. Just like real booze— except fake booze can also kill you in ways you don't expect. That's what the World Health Organization's representative in China says. “Where counterfeit alcohol is made from poor quality ingredients or toxic industrial chemicals, consuming it could lead to serious acute illness or worse.” The nasty chemicals he's referring to include antifreeze and methanol, which can make you go blind. And bottling conditions can be, as one British newspaper reported, “perilously unsanitary.” Which is a nice way of saying that counterfeiters were caught bottling the booze in toilets. In a recent case 22 people were poisoned after drinking fake whisky at a bar southern China. It's unclear how much they drank, but according to local reports, some experienced visual impairment, dizziness and some even vomited. Now while for some people that might sound like just another Friday night, it turns out the whiskey was poisonous, and some of them ended up in intensive care unit and nearly died. Now you might think: “Liquor then beer, you're in the clear.” But even beer in China can make you sick. In this video, workers at an underground factory in Dongguan are dunking used Budweiser cans into a tub of cheap beer with their bare hands to fill them up. Then the Budweiser-branded cans run along a filthy conveyor belt where they get capped and presto, ready to quench the thirst— or claim the life— of the unsuspecting night club goer. Authorities estimated that the underground factory churned out about 600,000 crates of fake Budweiser a month, which were then distributed to bars and nightclubs. Fake alcohol won't always kill you, but you'll definitely have the worst hangover of your life. For a quick recovery, just remember, drink plenty of water. Just not the fake kind, like from the illegal bottling plant near Shanghai, where a man was busted filling empty jugs with dirty tap water and passing them off as well-know brands like Nestle. So...China is full of fake liquor and water. I think I'll just stick with milk. Unless, of course, it's... Number 3 Tainted milk powder. Back in 2008, 300,000 babies got sick after drinking tainted milk powder from the Chinese company Sanlu. At least six of the babies died from kidney damage. Eventually, two Sanlu executives also died. From being executed. The scandal was one of the worst consumer product scares in modern Chinese history. Partly because authorities tried— and failed— to cover it up. Although they did successfully cover it up until after the 2008 Beijing Olympics, so they get at least a bronze medal for saving face.