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THE NEW YORK TIMESBy WALT BOGDANICH and JAKE HOOKER
Published: May 6, 2007

From China to Panama, a Trail of Poisoned Medicine

Toxic syrup has figured in at least eight mass poisonings around the world in the past two decades.
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But records and interviews show that in three of the last four cases it was made in China, a major source of counterfeit drugs.
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Panama is the most recent victim. Last year, government officials there unwittingly mixed diethylene glycol into 260,000 bottles of cold medicine — with devastating results. Families have reported 365 deaths from the poison, 100 of which have been confirmed so far.
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Panama’s death toll leads directly to Chinese companies that made and exported the poison as 99.5 percent pure glycerin.

Forty-six barrels of the toxic syrup arrived via a poison pipeline stretching halfway around the world. Through shipping records and interviews with government officials, The New York Times traced this pipeline from the Panamanian port of Colón, back through trading companies in Barcelona, Spain, and Beijing, to its beginning near the Yangtze Delta in a place local people call “chemical country.”

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China is already being accused by United States authorities of exporting wheat gluten containing an industrial chemical, melamine, that ended up in pet food and livestock feed. The F.D.A. recently banned imports of Chinese-made wheat gluten after it was linked to pet deaths in the United States.

Beyond Panama and China, toxic syrup has caused mass poisonings in Haiti, Bangladesh, Argentina, Nigeria and twice in India.
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Zum Artikel:
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/06/world/...&hp&oref=slogin


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