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"Made in China" - three simple words we Americans have become accustomed to seeing every day on products from Char-Broil gas grills to Mattel Barbie dolls. We are numb to the fact that most of what we buy is now manufactured in China.

Shrouded behind these words are people - specifically, Chinese people, who are suffering slow, horrific deaths due to the abysmal working conditions in Chinese factories that manufacture these products.

According to a report by Loretta Tofani, a Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter funded by grants from the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting in Washington, D.C., and the Dick Goldensohn Fund for International Reporting at The Center for Investigative Reporting in Berkeley, California, 200 million Chinese workers are regularly exposed to toxic chemicals and life threatening diseases. In fact, China has more deaths per capita from work-related illnesses each year than any other country. In 2005, 386,645 Chinese workers died of occupational illnesses. To put this in perspective, that is equal to the entire population of Miami, Florida.

The appalling methods employed by Chinese factory owners to churn out low-cost consumables for the United States and the rest of the world will shock you. At least, they should. Amputations from altered and unsafe machinery, lung disease silicosis, myelodysplastic anemia and kidney failure are the end result of trying to satiate the West's increasing appetite for cheap goo-gaws and trinkets.

The United States is China's top trade partner. According to 2006 U.S.-China Business Council data, China exported approximately $203 billion in goods to the United States alone. On the flip side, the United States exported a meager $59 billion in products to China during the same period. That's a ratio of 3 to 1 - an unbalanced partnership at best.

Today, successful American companies, whose focus never seems to waiver far from the bottom line, are increasingly choosing Chinese factories to outsource manufacturing and/or provide inexpensive imports for sale in the United States.

Retail giant Wal-Mart is the leader of the pack, with 2006 gross sales of more than $351 billion. Prominently perched atop Fortune 500's list of 2007's largest American companies, Wal-Mart imports approximately 50%-60% of its products from overseas - over 10% of all U.S. imports from China go straight to Wal-Mart. Apple, Mattel, Intel, Home Depot, Sears and ironically American Girl, are other popular companies that employ low-wage Chinese workers

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