Johnson & Johnson pulls Tylenol 8 Hour caplets in 50-count bottles in its 13th recall in barely a year
Article Source: msnbc.com
from:msnbc.comMoldy smell prompts another Tylenol recall
Seeded on Mon Oct 18, 2010 6:43 PM EDT (msnbc.com)
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bet the spokesperson won't answer my question: "With quality control worse than Chinese lead and baby-food factories, why are you still in business in regulated life-and-death industries?"
All they care about is profits over safety / quality anyday.
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=newsarchive&sid=az9ShNouwC8U&refer=home
Alot of drugs are being produced in China. I guess after years and years of dangerous recalls, they would take the hint. I guess not. Profits prevails over common sense for these folks.
The workers, managers etc. need to step up to bat and make sure this doesn't happen. I think the Q.C. department needs a major change of personnel and maybe a few top managers to motivate the ones that are left to take these incidents serious. These should be career limiting decisions considering how serious it could be. If they need some help I am sure there are enough unemployed people around that would take the task on willingly and get it right.
this is only the tip of the iceberg; all of big pharma stinks.
Would that the moldy smell was the least dangerous thing about Tylenol... a drug with unequivocal hepatotoxicity and a criminally low therapeutic index. A shocking testament to the sway the pharmaceutical companies hold over consumers that this drug is on the market.
Please fix the problem quickly! Nothing works like your products. I live in a river valley and desperately needs your allergy medicine.
Having sold branded pharmaceuticals for almost 4 years, I was proud to say "buy J&J OTC products instead of generics". Wow, I feel like a horse's rear. I will NEVER buy another J&J product again. This has been going on way too long J&J. I don't even trust your baby shampoo for my kids now. Stop thinking you are so great and start acting like you are great.
To kill your best products by getting sloppy with quality control....how sad.
I just hope Campbell's Chicken Noodle Soup does not fall prey to this horrific display of incompetence...I love that stuff! MMMM good!
Sounds to me like somebody is "out to get" Johnson & Johnson -- I think the whole recall is a result of somebody's backlash to the comments made by one of the top brass at Johnson & Johnson regarding the bailouts and Obamacare. .........Very interesting.
ingestable products made outside the US (Puerto Rico, Mexico) are unsafe! Colegate toothpaste is made in Mexico - dont buy!
I feel the need to clarify two of your statements. Puerto Rico is part of the US (this can be verified in any primary school political map), second, PR regulatory level is above the continental states as per statistics from the own US. This is because PR hosts the largest concentration of pharmas and Biotech production companies, thus education and process excellence is world-class. Now, an additional point- the odor is not part of the manufacturing or QA process, also toothpaste is NOT an ingestible product (do people eat toothpaste-really?)
BoricuaDLB ? clarify further, Puerto Rico is a 'Territory' of the United States, not part of it, if it was part of the United States, We'd be 51 states not 50.
I agree with Boricua...PR is world class for pharma, and it's not some sweat shop place like in China. Many pharma companies are on the island due to its tax benefits, so it's not as if it's a third world country producing these drugs. It is indeed part of the U.S.A., and its citizens are considered natural born U.S. citizens just like you and me. Guam, U.S. Virgin Islands, etc. are all similar to PR in terms of status to the U.S.
This issue is all about the pallets being used by contract manufacturers...not the product, the company, the industry in general, etc. Just a reminder that ANY company (not just "big pharma") out there that uses chemically-treated wood pallets is susceptible to this issue. Just remember that the next time you're at Sam's Club, BJ's, etc. and you see wood pallets.
There are standards out there, but the contract companies are disobeying these standards. J&J actually has strict standards about this (most companies do not), so if you're more strict, you're going to find more issues. I'll bet you 99 out of 100 companies are using these types of pallets, but without standards against them, they wouldn't recall anything. The company is helping to get rid of this type of pallet to protect the public, so the last thing you should be doing is bashing them.
Didn't they originally identified the problem from the wooden pallets and replaced it? But yet continue to have the same problems? Makes me wonder if it's not the wooden pallets that is causing most of the moldy smell.
what would the pallets have to do with it? Your trying to sell me on the chemically treated wood smell getting through the shrink wrap, cardboard box, pill container box, pill container, into the pills, really? I was born at night but it wasn't last night? you must have J & J stock.
It's a chemical that's used to treat the pallets that turns into the 2,4,6-TBA that is dangerous (and creates the moldy smell). Look it up if you want. The chemical is originally something like 2,4,6-TBP, but converts into 2,4,6-TBA which is the dangerous version.
Again, look it up. The issue revolves around the wood pallets, not the products.
Storm,
It could be the empty bottles being shipped to the plant on those wood pallets. Just like empty cans are shipped to soda bottlers. The tops are covered but not with individual lids. So the plastic could get some of the chemical on them. At the plant the bottles go through a process where they are turned upside down before filling plus they are scanned by cameras and computers to make sure nothing foreign is in the bottle. But that isn't going to catch small amounts of some chemical that permeated the plastic. After the bottles are filled they are capped, packaged and wrapped so wooden pallets should be fine at that point.
Huge plants make for great economy of scale but when something goes wrong it effects a bunch of product. One reason there are such huge recalls when produce or meat is contaminated.
Additionally, plastic is not impermeable. PLENTY of chemicals can leach through, and this is why studies are conducted on the label stock, varnish, adhesive, and inks of every label, just to ensure that everything is safe to the consumer. Again, it's a derivative of the chemical treatment for the wood pallets that is causing this issue.
Need to seriously revisit their process. "Root Cause Analysis".
Here we go again... how many more recalls will we have to go through until we overhaul the manufacturing process?!
I Honestly believe that SOMEONE should be held accountable for this senslessness. 13 times in less than a year????? COME ON PEOPLE!!!!! And most all for the same reasons? Why doesn't the FDA do something about this? I feel the owners of this company should be at fault and held accountable, as goes the old addage, "the captain is responsible for his crew". Well, CEO's and whomever should be responsible for this lack of proper maitenence within thier factories/distribution plants. why should the public continue to suffer and these people continue to put out bad products without any fines/fees or ANY kind of punishment. If a resturant violates health codes and puts out bad food, health inspectors shut the whole resturant down, why should this be any different? Because they are a mass major money making corperation and can continue to but thier way out? BOGUS it is.
wasn't finished... Some argue that it's not the fault of the owners/CEOs and the blame falls with the contractors, well, who continues to hire these same contractors??? One needs to stop the problem directly at it's source not piddle around with it's symptoms.
LOL i just realized, i bet if people started getting REALLY sick and found a good liar, opps, i mean lawyer they could sue J n J for medical bills incrued from this travesty. Kind of like the obese family did to McDonalds a few years back.
i stopped taking tylenol months ago as it makes me feel sick...must be my body is trying to tell me something!
Is there any chance that tylenol being recalled could cause someone to contact c-diff if the medicine
is condemed ? Would sure like to know.
This is unreal! About 8 months ago they recalled the infant Tylenol and we had to fill out forms, have not seen a coupon or refund for our two bottles, but not to worried, we will NOT be buying this product anymore; also we were very lucky our little baby girl is heallthy and was not harmed by this corps carelessness.
Bad business these huge drug companies.
AmericaFirst-500386 Quote-also we were very lucky our little baby girl is heallthy and was not harmed by this corps carelessness.
That's the greatest gift of all, blessed be;)
The children's Tylenol issue (potential bacterial contamination) and this issue (chemical used in wood pallet treatments) are two separate issues.
Population control underway.......
After this many incidents, you think people would change their minds and their pain relief products. If your milk kept souring before the expiration date, wouldn't you switch brands? It's not rocket science, people. There are other choices.
The question in my mind is how many of the generic brands does J & J make, I can easily figure out their name brand products, but what about generic's made under a different name?
No generics are made by J&J, if that's what you're asking
I hope and pray our 300 million U.S. citizens wake up and recognize that our good health is due as much to general/basic common sense as rocket science (of course, we've learned a lot from specialized fields). I had hoped the U.S. Census 2010 would help to generally grouped people around the country so that we could move on to the more specialized areas of the gov't. I don't think this has happened (I call the census a fiasco!) and we need to slow down because we remain a blob of unidentified humanity...a shame in such a developed nation as the United States.
This is just another example of how American is no longer the "can do" country. It is getting to be more of a "we'll try" country.
Note to Johnson and Johnson: Get your heads out of your a$$. Try cleaning up the factories, once and for all. Do it right for once and stop trying to do it on the cheap.
You can't make money if you can't sell pills. Get a clue.
Well at least no dead stewardessess this time...
This is very disturbing especially because tylenol is the only safe medicine that can be taken by pregnant women. What if a pregnant women had taken one of these contaminated pills?? I am currently pregnant, and I am just very glad that I bought the generic brand of tylenol!!!
Too bad the reporter is too lazy to add a link to the recalled lot numbers. It's not searchable because everyone wrote about the reported recalls on their website.
How does a checmical from a wood pallet make it into a sealed bottle past the foil and plastic seals? If minute traces can cause these problems, you would think J&J would caution against handling the box which would be heavily saturated.
Something doesn't make sense in their explanation.....
First off, chemicals leach through plastic, which is why extensive studies are done on every label, varnish, adhesive, and ink that is used on these bottles.
Secondly, the contamination could have come from any of the packaging components (label, bottle, seal, etc.) BEFORE the product went in the bottle (see someone else's explanation above).
It's a chemical derivative from a product that was used to treat the wood pallets for pests/fungi. J&J doesn't allow it, but most companies do, which is why only J&J products are being affected (other companies have it, but aren't testing for it). Look it up -- it completely makes sense. The chemical turns into 2,4,6-TBA, which then gets into the bottle and causes the smell.
The FDA should make them do a recall based on contamination with 2,4,6 Tri-whatever, not because of what their Public Relations Dept. chooses to call "a moldy smell." A moldy smell does not make people violently ill.
This comment is to the writer. Good to know about the recall on Tylenol, but just written poorly!
Doesn’t any one proof read these articles before they are posted?!!
You had written....after some consumers were sickened by ingesting the pills or smelling or a musty or moldy odor on the bottles.
Read better if you had put…..after some consumers were sickened by ingesting the pills or some smelling, a musty or moldy odor on the bottle.
The whole story doesn’t read very well. It’s jumbled! After 5 more sentences down from the first one, this is thrown in which, I believe, should have been added after the second sentence. "Some complaints have come in from smelling the bottles and some from ingesting the pills," Goodrich said.
(Even though that’s a little redundant because that was already explained. ) Instead of saying, vomiting and diarrhea after taking the pills, a spokeswoman said Monday. You could have put …spokeswoman Carol Goodrich said Monday. She could not say whether any complaints……or she also said she….
My point is, is lately I have read some “story’s" that are written like a Jr. High kid wrote them! Well, maybe that is who wrote them, and if so, I apologize for being so harsh. But if you consider yourself a writer, journalist, …what ever…. Pre-read or have some one pre-read it before putting it out there for the world to read. (some one that actually knows how to write, would be nice for a change!)