OUTAKE #11, Dangerously Exotic

Trade has been an integral component of human culture ever since the Stone Age, when people began trading their surplus goods, food, or raw materials for items that they could not produce themselves. It still makes perfect sense to import foods that are so exotic or specialized that they are not produced domestically, for example: French cheeses, Belgian lambic beer, papayas, or bananas; or if the imported foods are superior in quality to their domestic counterparts. Beware of products that are unbelievably cheap, they may not be what they seem. When there is intense pressure at the production end to cut costs, and regulation is lax at the receiving end, tragedies may occur. In 2006, diethylene glycol, a sweet, poisonous substance that is used in antifreeze, was mixed into 260,000 bottles of cold syrup in Panama. The forty-six barrels of diethylene glycol had originated in China. Enterprising Chinese enterprising counterfeiters often substitute the poisonous diethylene glycol for the nontoxic and much more expensive pharmaceutical-grade glycerine that it closely resembles. The barrels had changed hands, companies, and countries many times during their voyage, the shipping records had been altered each time, and no one had bothered to test the contents of the barrels, which were labeled “glycerine.” The reported death toll from the poisoned cough syrup was 365. Toxic cough syrup has also caused mass poisonings in Haiti, Bangladesh, Argentina, Nigeria, and India. One weekend in May 2007, Eduardo Arias, a mid-level government worker who reviewed environmental reports, went to a discount store in Panama City that was reputed to have such low prices that the street vendors bought their wares there. As Mr. Arias stepped into the store, a large display of toothpaste caught his eye and stopped him dead in his tracks. He said, “Without touching the tube, the letters were big enough for me to read: diethylene glycol. It was inconceivable to me that a known toxic substance that killed all these people could be openly on sale and that people would go on about their business calmly, selling and buying this stuff,” Mr. Arias bought a tube, then used up one of his vacation days the next day in order to walk the tube to the nearest Health Ministry office where he was directed to a second health center where he filled out a form and left his tube of toxic toothpaste. Three days later, Panama’s top health official announced that toothpaste containing diethylene glycol had been found by an unidentified shopper in Panama City. The label on the toothpaste did not list its country of origin, though markings suggested that it originated in Germany. Shipping records revealed that the toothpaste had actually been made in China, and that 5,000 to 6,000 tubes of the poisonous toothpaste had been slipped into Panama hidden in a shipment of animal products. Many more tubes had been shipped to other countries throughout the Americas. On June 1, the United States announced that tubes of toxic toothpaste had been found within its borders. Eventually investigators discovered that some tubes of tainted toothpaste did not list diethylene glycol on their labels, and some counterfeited tubes of Colgate and Sensodyne were discovered that contained the poison. When Glaxo Smith Kline, the manufacturer of Sensodyne, traced the counterfeit toothpaste to a factory in Zhejiang Province, the Chinese government shut it down. The Chinese chemical company that produced the diethylene glycol that had poisoned the cough syrup in Panama was also shut down by the Chinese authorities.