Three leading international fashion brands on sale in Shanghai markets were found to have quality problems, officials said yesterday.

The firms in question are GUESS, H&M and Puma.

 In the past two months, Shanghai Bureau of Quality and Technical Supervision officers inspected both domestic and international brands of T-shirts, shirts, jeans, jackets and trousers at local markets.

Most products that failed quality tests had a higher pH index than allowable, including an H&M dress. Officials said clothes with high pH indexes could cause skin allergies.

Generally the pH tolerance index for healthy skin is 5.5 to seven, and some clothes were outside this range.

Other problems, such as inadequate textile content and color fading, were also found in the inspections. For example, a GUESS women's pair of short pants was found to have an easily fading color, and a Puma T-shirt had less textile than the legal standard.

The bureau has ordered the producers to improve their quality, and remove questionable articles from the shelves.

H&M said the quality problem of the dress, which was made in India, was caused by the different standards that applied in China and Europe. And the company's own testing standard was the "highest" among 28 countries where its clothes were sold.

"The pH index is not a vital chemical standard for clothes," said Wu Shuang, an official with H&M. "For example, in Europe, the pH index is not mentioned in compulsory standards."

The company said from now on it would take Chinese standards on clothes into consideration when testing products for China.

GUESS concurred. The company said it would also test all its products for the Chinese market according to the local standards.

The firms have withdrawn all articles that are inferior by Chinese standards.

Officials from Puma were unavailable for comment.

This is the second time international fashion brands were found to have quality problems in Shanghai.

In January 2007, the Shanghai Industrial and Commercial Administrative Bureau said some products of inter-national brands were found to have quality problems. These included exceeding formaldehyde content and inadequate textile content.