2 December 2008
EVEN as the nation continues to mourn the untimely death of no less than 45 infants who ingested My Pikin - a brand of teething mixture - adulterated with the industrial chemical Diethylene glycol (DEG), historical records show that the development may only be the latest in a long-line of recorded poisonings associated with the chemical.
It is on record that the lethal effects of the chemical as a mass poisoner, dates back to the 1937 Elixir Sulfanilamide disaster in the USA, in which 107 people died after taking sulfanilamide dissolved in diethylene glycol.
Then in Haiti in 1996, was the death of 85 children due to glycerine contaminated with diethylene glycol in a paracetamol syrup produced by Pharval Laboratories, a Haitian company, which did not use standard quality assurance procedures to verify the purity of the glycerine.
Unforgettable is the death of 339 children in Bangladesh in 1990. The children developed kidney failure, and most of them died, after being given paracetamol syrup contaminated with diethylene glycol.
Sixteen years later in October 2006, the CDC and the Ministry of Health of Panama detected toxic levels of diethylene glycol in a sugarless liquid expectorant during an investigation of 46 deaths from a syndrome characterised by gastrointestinal symptoms, renal failure and paralysis. Almost all the victims were hypertensive and diabetic. The source of the contamination was traced to diethylene glycol labeled as glycerine.
In May 2007, toothpaste sold in Panama was discoverd to have been labeled as containing DEG, the same ingredient that had tainted cough syrup and killed 138 Panamanians in 2006. Panamanian officials discovered that the toothpaste had come from China and immediately initiated a global response.
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