Poisoned Chinese Toothpaste More Widespread Than First Thought

The Food and Drug Administration has advised consumers to discard all Chinese-made toothpaste, regardless of the brand.

State officials in Georgia and North Carolina said all the tainted tubes were being replaced with brands made outside China. The officials said there had been no reports of illnesses caused by the toothpaste.

Officials of the Food and Drug Administration said toothpaste with even small amounts of the bad ingredient, diethylene glycol, a syrupy poison, had a "low but meaningful risk of toxicity and injury" for children and people with kidney or liver disease.

"This stuff does not belong in toothpaste, period," a spokesman for the drug agency, Doug Arbesfeld, said. "No Chinese toothpaste has come into the country since the end of May."

Since the Panamanian government found Chinese toothpaste with diethylene glycol in May, countries from Latin America to West Africa to Japan have seized the toothpaste.

Panama last year inadvertently mixed the poison made in China into 260,000 bottles of cold medicine, killing at least 100 people, prosecutors there said.

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	China Says Safety of Exports Guaranteed	Associated Press	Wed Jun 27	1