Hunt on for 90m toxic drug capsules
Print Edition
AUTHORITIES in east China’s Zhejiang Province are trying to trace about 90 million medicine capsules produced by an unlicensed manufacturer, which they say could be hazardous to people’s health.
“The capsules were made in Ninghai County and then transported to Xinchang County,” an unnamed prosecutor was quoted as saying by news website thepaper.cn.
“We are trying to find out where they went,” he said.
The capsules were produced by a team of 11 people working in an underground workshop in Ninghai, which was raided by police on July 22, following a tip-off from a member of the public.
The leader of the group, a man named Pan Baihai, and his 10 workers were subsequently arrested, the report said.
During the raid, police and officials from the food and drug administration seized nearly 442,000 capsules, 103 kilograms of part-finished products and 724kg of raw materials.
Tests on the capsules found them to contain almost 65 times the permitted amount of chromium, a toxic heavy metal that can damage the kidneys and liver, and even cause cancer.
Officials also determined that about 90 million capsules had entered the market, though they did not say how they knew this.
According to police, 56-year-old Pan, a native of Xinchang, had formerly worked for a pharmaceutical company. When the firm experienced financial difficulties, Pan was given a capsule-making machine in lieu of 10,000 yuan (US$1,600) of unpaid wages, the report said.
He opened his unlicensed workshop in February and began making capsules from industrial-grade gelatin, a substance banned in the manufacture of products intended for human consumption due to its high chromium content, it said.
After producing the capsules, Pan sold them on to a group of four men, the report said, without elaborating.
Xinchang has a long tradition of capsule manufacture, but its reputation was badly damaged in 2012 after China Central Television reported that some of the products made there were toxic.
The program sparked a nationwide investigation, which found that drugs produced by nine pharmaceutical companies — all of which sourced their capsules from Xinchang — contained dangerously high levels of chromium — in some cases more than 90 times the legal limit.
The toxicity was a result of the capsules being made from industrial-grade gelatin, which is a by-product of the leather-making process.
In the subsequent probe, 228 suspects were detained, about 100 production lines were closed down and more than 1.2 billion capsules were recalled.
In April 2013, several drug supervisors were sent to prison for dereliction of duty in relation to the case. Among them was Zhang Baiqing, the former deputy head of Xinchang’s drug administration, who was sentenced to 18 months, and his boss Liang Yonghua, who was given a one-year sentence suspended for 18 months. Chen Liangzhong, a former section chief, was sentenced to a year in prison.
Also, seven officials from capsule manufacturing companies were convicted of making and selling toxic products, and were given prison sentences ranging from 10 months to 11 years.
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