Toxic Cough Syrup Causes Deaths in Panama

How a tailor in China passed glycol off as glycerin, and killed hundreds of children
By Colleen Barry,  Newser Staff
Posted May 6, 2007 8:00 AM CDT
Toxic Cough Syrup Causes Deaths in Panama
Empty bottles wait to be filled with prescription medication at a pharmacy in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, in April 2004.   (KRT Photos)

American drugmakers are on the lookout this week for another in the growing list of potentially deadly Chinese exports. This time, it's diethylene glycol, a sweet-but-toxic chemical that masquerades as glycerin in common medications like cough syrup and that has already killed almost 400 people—many of them children—in Panama. 

A New York Times investigation tracks the chemical's deadly path back to China's Yangtze Delta, where a tailor with fake credentials passed off the glycol as glycerin syrup. The glycol moved through three continents undetected before a Panamanian doctor traced a wave of deaths to its presence in cough syrup. Chinese drug monitoring is "a black hole,” says a local trader. (More medicine stories.)

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