May 22, 2007
China Investigates Contaminated Toothpaste
By DAVID BARBOZA and WALT BOGDANICH

DANYANG, China, May 21 - Chinese authorities are investigating whether
two companies from this coastal region exported tainted toothpaste as
more contaminated product, including some made for children, has
turned up in Latin America.

A team of government investigators arrived here Sunday afternoon and
closed the factory of the Danyang City Success Household Chemical
Company, a small building housing about 30 workers in a nearby
village, according to villagers and one factory worker. The government
also questioned the manager of another toothpaste maker, Goldcredit
International Trading, which is in Wuxi, about an hour's drive
southeast of here.

No tainted toothpaste has been found in the United States, but a
spokesman for the Food and Drug Administration said yesterday that the
agency would be taking "a hard look" at whether to issue an import
alert.

Authorities in the Dominican Republic said they seized 36,000 tubes of
toothpaste suspected of containing diethylene glycol, an industrial
solvent and prime ingredient in some antifreeze. Included were tubes
of toothpaste marketed for children with bubble gum and strawberry
flavors sold under the name of "Mr. Cool Junior."

Toothpaste containing the toxic solvent was also found in Panama and
Australia in the last week.

Bautista Rojas Gómez, the secretary of health of the Dominican
Republic, said the toothpaste, with diethylene glycol listed as an
ingredient, was found in stores and warehouses across the country,
including near the Haitian border.

Diethylene glycol is the same poison that the Panamanian government
unwittingly mixed into cold medicine last year, killing at least 100
people. In that case, the poison falsely labeled as glycerin, a
harmless syrup, originated in China, shipping records show. Diethylene
glycol is generally less expensive than its chemical cousin glycerin.

Panamanian authorities said they believed the tainted toothpaste found
in their country, containing up to 4.6 percent diethylene glycol, came
from China.

Executives from both companies under investigation in China denied in
interviews on Monday that they had exported any toothpaste containing
diethylene glycol to Panama.

"We didn't do this; we didn't make the bad stuff," said Shi Lei, a
manager at Danyang City Success. "It was probably someone else."

But Ms. Shi and other toothpaste makers in this region said that
diethylene glycol had been used in toothpaste in China for years and
that producers believed it was not very harmful.

Government investigators arrived here just days after customs
officials in Panama said that they had discovered diethylene glycol in
6,000 tubes of toothpaste. The toothpaste was being sold under the
English brand names Mr. Cool and Excel.

There have been no reports of deaths tied to toothpaste containing the
chemical.

Dr. Douglas Throckmorton, deputy director for the Center for Drug
Evaluation and Research at the F.D.A., said diethylene glycol levels
found in some Panamanian toothpaste was nearly 50 times greater than
what is deemed safe. "Kids swallow toothpaste," Dr. Throckmorton said.
"That is going to be a concern to you."

Suspicion over China's role in the tainted toothpaste and cold
medicine comes just weeks after investigators blamed two Chinese
companies for intentionally shipping pet food ingredients contaminated
with an industrial chemical to the United States, leading to one of
the largest pet food recalls in history. The cases are fueling
mounting concerns about the quality and safety of China's food and
drug exports and threatening to turn into a trade dispute.

After initially rejecting any Chinese role in the tainted pet food,
Beijing officials banned the use of melamine, an industrial chemical
used in fertilizer and plastics, from vegetable proteins. Melamine and
several related chemicals had been discovered in contaminated pet food
ingredients. Chinese officials also promised to overhaul its food
safety regulations and tighten export controls.

Indeed, the government seems to have responded quickly to reports last
weekend about contaminated toothpaste. Hu Keyu, the manager at
Goldcredit International, said investigators had talked to him over
the weekend because his company was the first to sell and export
toothpaste under the brand label Mr. Cool. But he and his staff
insisted that Goldcredit never exported to Panama, and that this year
the company had exported only a small amount of Mr. Cool toothpaste to
Australia. Goldcredit executives said they did not sell toothpaste
under the Excel brand name.

Mr. Hu said his company exports toothpaste, toothbrushes, glue and
other goods to the United States, Europe and other regions but that
his company no longer uses diethylene glycol. He said, however, that
most toothpaste makers in this region use diethylene glycol because it
is considered a cheap substitute for glycerin.

"You know, if you're in the export market, the margins are small, so
people use the substitute," he said. "Even one percent or half a
percent price difference can matter to people here."

Executives from Goldcredit and Danyang said the brand Mr. Cool had
been copied by several other companies and that numerous trading
companies could be exporting the products.

Danyang City Success Household Chemical, however, said that while it
did not export to Panama, it has used diethylene glycol in its
toothpaste, and that the government does not have a clear regulation
on how much can be added. Danyang City Success is a small company in a
village in Danyang, a city whose entrance boasts that it has been
designated one of China's "national sanitary" cities for its
cleanliness.

Danyang City Success produces both Mr. Cool and Excel and exports
toothpaste around the world, including to Europe and Africa, company
executives said. But this afternoon, villagers and one young factory
worker, who declined to give her name, said that investigators had
arrived Sunday night and closed the factory to investigate possible
contamination in its exports. Ms. Shi, one of the managers along with
her husband, met a reporter at the entrance to the factory and
insisted her company had nothing to do with the case in Panama. Inside
the gate a team of investigators could be seen meeting with company
officials and then departing with a bag of documents. Villagers said
the investigators were provincial and local officials, including the
village's Communist party secretary.

The sister of the party secretary, who only gave her name as Miss Hu,
said Danyang City Success had been around for four or five years and
that it was run by a former salesman and his wife, Ms. Shi, who grew
up in the village.

"He used to sell packaging materials. Then he saved up his money and
started this toothpaste company," she said. "But lately the company
has been struggling."

Mr. Hu at Goldcredit said that while he did not produce the toothpaste
shipped to Panama, diethylene glycol had been used for years at very
low levels in Chinese toothpaste as a glycerin substitute. "If
diethylene glycol were poisonous," he said, "all Chinese people would
have been poisoned."

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David Barboza reported from Danyang, China, and Walt Bogdanich from
New York. R. M. Koster contributed from Panama; Guangming Xu and Rujun
Shen contributed from China.