19 May 2007

Merchant of Death

First cough syrup... now toothpaste.

I don't know about you, but from now on, I'm checking labels for country of origin, every time I go shopping...
Diethylene glycol, a poisonous ingredient in some antifreeze, has been found in 6,000 tubes of toothpaste in Panama, and customs officials there said yesterday that the product appeared to have originated in China.

“Our preliminary information is that it came from China, but we don’t know that with certainty yet,” said Daniel Delgado Diamante, Panama’s director of customs. “We are still checking all the possible imports to see if there could be other shipments.”
Hmmm... why does this sound so familiar?
Diethylene glycol is the same poison that the Panamanian government inadvertently mixed into cold medicine last year, killing at least 100 people.

Records show that in that episode the poison, falsely labeled as glycerin, a harmless syrup, also originated in China.

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