by Rod Hughes
A national alert by the Health Ministry two weeks ago not only threatens mainland China’s export reputation, but the state of dental hygene in Costa Rica as well.
Two brands of toothpaste, Genial and Mr. Cool, imported from China, managed to slip past health inspectors despite its being contaminated by a potentially deadly chemical, dietilene glycol, found in auto brake fluid. The Health Ministry issued a warning about the toxic product more than a month ago but failed to search for the toothpaste, which was finally spotted on store shelves by a reporter for the Costa Rican daily Al Día.
So far, no deaths or illness have been reported in this country but the same substance that turned up in medicines Panama’s Social Security system imported from China is blamed for more than 100 deaths in Panama. When asked how the toxic substance got through the Health Ministry, Minister María Luisa Avila was only able to say, “It just got away from us,” according to The Tico Times weekly paper.
Just this week, health officials turned up another 193 tubes of the potentially deadly toothpaste in Ciudad Neilly, a town on the Costa Rica-Panama border. The search goes on.
The ministry reported that 300 tubes were sold in San Jose and the Guanacaste province capital, Liberia. One distributor, hearing of the alert, voluntarily turned over to the ministry three tons of the product that had been stored in a warehouse. The minister threatened to close any store that continued to sell the two brands and possibly file a criminal complaint.
Meanwhile, in China, the Foreign Ministry of that country announced that Zheng Xiaoyu, a pharamcuetical control officer, had been sentenced to death for taking bribes of $832,000 in exchange for licenses to sell contaminated products abroad, the EFE news agency reported.
According the the U.S. Environmental Agency, even ingesting a small amount of the substance can be fatal and may lead to disabling the central nervous system.
Asked how to avoid problems with similar consumer products, a health official responded, “Just stick to known brands until we get this cleared up.”