Medicine capsules health scare
By Lu Feiran |
April 16, 2012, Monday
|
Print Edition
Print Edition
Industrial gelatin is being used in the production of medicine capsules, according to a TV investigation, and could be linked to cancer.
Police have begun an investigation after a China Central Television program revealed that industrial gelatin, which is made from waste leather, was being transported to plants in the country's biggest capsule manufacturing area in east China's Zhejiang Province.
Ru'ao Town has more than 10 capsule producing plants, which provide about a third of the output on the Chinese mainland.
CCTV reporters found that the factory price of the same type of capsules ranged from 40 yuan (US$6.3) to 100 yuan per 10,000 capsules. CCTV said the cheaper capsules would have been made using industrial gelatin.
Wang Haoming, a sales manager for the Zhuokang Capsule Co Ltd in the town, told reporters the company used both types of gelatin. "They cost 20,000 yuan and 30,000 yuan a ton respectively. We don't stock the lower-price gelatin in the company because of the authorities' random inspection."
Wang said Zhuokang's products usually go to pharmaceutical plants in the country's northeastern and northwestern areas.
The Huaxing Capsule Plant is one of the biggest in Ru'ao, providing tens of millions of capsules every day destined for Sichuan, Jilin and Qinghai provinces. The plant said the "lower-price gelatin" was popular in the town.
"Such gelatin reduces the manufacturing cost remarkably," Zhu Mingguang, an official with the plant, told CCTV.
The plant said that the gelatin it used came from manufacturers in Hebei and Jiangxi provinces.
At the Xueyang Gelatin and Protein Plant in Hengshui City in Hebei Province, officials told CCTV that last year the plant produced more than 1,000 tons of such "lower-price" gelatin, most of which went to capsule producers in Zhejiang.
Although Xueyang is a plant with a food production license, it used leather scraps to make gelatin. The raw material is cheap, costing only several hundred yuan a ton, thus the industrial gelatin was also relatively cheap.
As tanning agents for leather usually contain chromium, the scraps also contain chromium residue. The heavy metal can damage people's kidneys and liver, or even cause cancer, according to medical experts.
Some pharmaceutical companies said they never test the capsules they use for chromium content.
CCTV later sent some medicine samples bought in Beijing, Jiangxi, Jilin and Qinghai for chromium tests.
The results provided by the Chinese Academy of Inspection and Quarantine showed that all 13 samples, produced by nine companies, contained chromium in excess of the country's standard - 2 milligrams per kilogram - and some contained 90 times more, CCTV said.
The Shanghai Food and Drug Administration said yesterday it was inspecting capsules made in Shanghai and medicines sold in city pharmacies. It didn't rule out the possibility of taking defective products off shelves.
Police have begun an investigation after a China Central Television program revealed that industrial gelatin, which is made from waste leather, was being transported to plants in the country's biggest capsule manufacturing area in east China's Zhejiang Province.
Ru'ao Town has more than 10 capsule producing plants, which provide about a third of the output on the Chinese mainland.
CCTV reporters found that the factory price of the same type of capsules ranged from 40 yuan (US$6.3) to 100 yuan per 10,000 capsules. CCTV said the cheaper capsules would have been made using industrial gelatin.
Wang Haoming, a sales manager for the Zhuokang Capsule Co Ltd in the town, told reporters the company used both types of gelatin. "They cost 20,000 yuan and 30,000 yuan a ton respectively. We don't stock the lower-price gelatin in the company because of the authorities' random inspection."
Wang said Zhuokang's products usually go to pharmaceutical plants in the country's northeastern and northwestern areas.
The Huaxing Capsule Plant is one of the biggest in Ru'ao, providing tens of millions of capsules every day destined for Sichuan, Jilin and Qinghai provinces. The plant said the "lower-price gelatin" was popular in the town.
"Such gelatin reduces the manufacturing cost remarkably," Zhu Mingguang, an official with the plant, told CCTV.
The plant said that the gelatin it used came from manufacturers in Hebei and Jiangxi provinces.
At the Xueyang Gelatin and Protein Plant in Hengshui City in Hebei Province, officials told CCTV that last year the plant produced more than 1,000 tons of such "lower-price" gelatin, most of which went to capsule producers in Zhejiang.
Although Xueyang is a plant with a food production license, it used leather scraps to make gelatin. The raw material is cheap, costing only several hundred yuan a ton, thus the industrial gelatin was also relatively cheap.
As tanning agents for leather usually contain chromium, the scraps also contain chromium residue. The heavy metal can damage people's kidneys and liver, or even cause cancer, according to medical experts.
Some pharmaceutical companies said they never test the capsules they use for chromium content.
CCTV later sent some medicine samples bought in Beijing, Jiangxi, Jilin and Qinghai for chromium tests.
The results provided by the Chinese Academy of Inspection and Quarantine showed that all 13 samples, produced by nine companies, contained chromium in excess of the country's standard - 2 milligrams per kilogram - and some contained 90 times more, CCTV said.
The Shanghai Food and Drug Administration said yesterday it was inspecting capsules made in Shanghai and medicines sold in city pharmacies. It didn't rule out the possibility of taking defective products off shelves.
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