More tainted capsules, companies found
By Zha Minjie |
April 28, 2012, Saturday
|
Print Edition
Print Edition
IN the latest nationwide inspections of medicine capsules, 74 batches made by 15 pharmaceutical companies were found to contain excessive chromium, the State Food and Drug Administration said yesterday.
The administration said it conducted checks on 117 producers and 941 batches of capsules. The toxic capsules will be recalled and destroyed, officials said. They said nine of the 15 companies were in Zhejiang Province, the main production area, while the others were in Chongqing and the provinces of Henan and Sichuan.
Producers' licenses will be suspended and people directly responsible will be "removed out of the medicine-production industry," officials said.
The scandal came to light when China Central Television reported that several companies were using industrial gelatin to make drug capsules. The gelatin contained chromium, which can cause kidney and liver damage and lead to cancer.
"Daily management and supervision is severely lax in these companies," FDA officials said. They have ordered all capsule manufactures to list their raw materials on the local FDA website so the public can be made aware of the ingredients.
The FDA issued an emergency notice calling for a halt to the sale and consumption of a list of drugs that may have been packed into tainted capsules. Many people started avoiding all drug capsules after the scandal was exposed.
Along with the checks, authorities have begun investigations into possible dereliction of duty among law-enforcement and safety supervisors.
Meanwhile, drug safety regulators in the Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region said yesterday that they were investigating a case in which a company dumped more than half a million medicine capsules, Xinhua news agency reported.
The capsules are being tested for chromium, said a spokesman with the food and drug bureau of Yinchuan City, the regional capital.
On Tuesday, some of the city's residents reported finding large quantities of green medicine capsules, as well as yellow and white powder, scattered on the side of a road near a residential community.
Follow-up investigations showed the capsules were dumped by Ningxia Tianma Pharmaceutical Science & Technology Development Co Ltd, the spokesman told Xinhua.
The spokesman said local authorities had recovered all the dumped capsules, seized the company's inventory and closed its production lines.
The administration said it conducted checks on 117 producers and 941 batches of capsules. The toxic capsules will be recalled and destroyed, officials said. They said nine of the 15 companies were in Zhejiang Province, the main production area, while the others were in Chongqing and the provinces of Henan and Sichuan.
Producers' licenses will be suspended and people directly responsible will be "removed out of the medicine-production industry," officials said.
The scandal came to light when China Central Television reported that several companies were using industrial gelatin to make drug capsules. The gelatin contained chromium, which can cause kidney and liver damage and lead to cancer.
"Daily management and supervision is severely lax in these companies," FDA officials said. They have ordered all capsule manufactures to list their raw materials on the local FDA website so the public can be made aware of the ingredients.
The FDA issued an emergency notice calling for a halt to the sale and consumption of a list of drugs that may have been packed into tainted capsules. Many people started avoiding all drug capsules after the scandal was exposed.
Along with the checks, authorities have begun investigations into possible dereliction of duty among law-enforcement and safety supervisors.
Meanwhile, drug safety regulators in the Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region said yesterday that they were investigating a case in which a company dumped more than half a million medicine capsules, Xinhua news agency reported.
The capsules are being tested for chromium, said a spokesman with the food and drug bureau of Yinchuan City, the regional capital.
On Tuesday, some of the city's residents reported finding large quantities of green medicine capsules, as well as yellow and white powder, scattered on the side of a road near a residential community.
Follow-up investigations showed the capsules were dumped by Ningxia Tianma Pharmaceutical Science & Technology Development Co Ltd, the spokesman told Xinhua.
The spokesman said local authorities had recovered all the dumped capsules, seized the company's inventory and closed its production lines.
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