A tragic lesson

Seventy years before the poisonous syrup diethylene glycol was found in Chinese-made toothpaste, it was used in an American-made antibiotic, left, with fatal results.

By Stephen Mihm

August 26, 2007

E-mail|
Reprints|

Text size – +

Some of the worst of regulatory lapses in China involve diethylene glycol, a deadly poison that has shown up in everything from toothpaste to cough syrup. More than 100 people, mostly children, died in Panama after ingesting cough syrup laced with the poison, which product counterfeiters in China had used as a cheap substitute for the sweetener glycerin. (Full article: 365 words)