#408 Caplets Crunch

Previously I talked about the odd product recall of a generic brand of acetaminophen. Seems bits of metal were found in a number of tablets. The number was small, only 200 tablets in a grand total of 70 million run through a metal detector, but still. I’m sure I’d rather not be that point 00007 percent that broke my crown when I was trying to cure a headache—even worse if I was taking the drug for a toothache to begin with. Some unanswered questions linger. You may remember the metal fragments found in the pills ranged from microdot size to pieces of wire a third of an inch long. So first, how did the metal get into the pills? Is there a big vat of dried drug that’s all caked up and ready for a crusher before it gets shaped into a pill? Did someone accidentally dump in a box of paper clips? If so, what were office supplies doing in a clean drug room? Presumably, the drugs that you and I ingest are not just lying around picking up microbes. It’s not like we cook our acetaminophen before eating. If submarine sandwich workers have to plastic glove their hands I’m thinking drug workers need to have the whole white outfit regalia. So again, from whence cometh the metal? Did one of the workers have an orthodontia problem? Just got fitted out in a Nerdstein 2000 around-the-head mega-retainer, elastic strap breaks, mouth metal flies out, there go 200 pills? Maybe. Maybe the metal came from the pill-making machine itself. Some of them have the pressure of an industrial vise. Maybe something broke loose, a washer or screw perhaps—or maybe one of its nuts got in the vise. The larger question to me is: Had this sort of thing happened before? Because what really made me wonder was when they said they had run over 70 million tablets through a metal detector. Just happened to have a metal detector lying around did they? Standard issue in a drug manufacturing plant? Or are industrial mishaps common there? Well, guess what, this same company has had problems before. Since 1993, according to FDA records, Perrigo Company has had at least 32 other product recalls in all its plants. The company wasn’t exactly sure where the current heavy metal pills came from. Maybe their Iron Butterfly plant in Mexico. Or their Metallica plant in China. Definitely not their Jethro Tull plant in the United Kingdom. Still, it’s apparent the company is not at the tippy-top of safety records. I’m thinking they need either better worker supervision, or a search-before-entering program at least as efficient as the airlines or rock concerts. They seem to already have the metal detectors. Maybe they could wand their employees as well. Because just last May they recalled 59,000 drug bottles contaminated with acrylic mirror particles. Yep, mirror. I don’t know about you, but the idea of someone powdering her nose while she makes my pain pills is enough to give me a head ache.
America, ya gotta love it.