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Letter to the editor

Bargain retailers still sell banned toothpaste

Consumers should throw out Chinese brands.

By BY LEONORA LAPETER ANTON
Published July 12, 2007

ST. PETERSBURG - Joe LaFrance recently removed two dozen boxes of Crescent toothpaste from a shelf in his dollar store after learning that the toothpaste contains a chemical used in antifreeze.

Until a reporter told him, LaFrance had no idea he was selling a Chinese-made toothpaste on the Food and Drug Administration's recall list.

"You're kidding me," said LaFrance, 50, as he stuffed the boxes into a cart and put them behind the counter of Joe's Smart Dollar in St. Petersburg. "Well, it's coming off. That's for sure. I definitely don't want anything to harm anybody out there."

The FDA has stopped all Chinese-made toothpaste from entering the United States and warned consumers to avoid buying any of it. Still, it remains on the shelves of many discount stores around the country, including in the Tampa Bay area.

The FDA's Florida office has logged a dozen similar complaints. Agency officials, who have reached out to distributors and retail trade associations, say it has been difficult to alert discount stores. No deaths in the United States have been connected to the toothpaste, but the chemical, diethylene glycol, killed 100 people in Panama last year after it was mixed with a Chinese-made cough syrup. It is used as a low-cost sweetener and thickening agent.

On Wednesday China banned the use of diethylene glycol in the production of toothpaste. Whether it will raise consumer confidence about Chinese-made products remains to be seen. A number have been recalled recently, including tainted pet food, lead-laden children's toys, juice with tainted color additives, tires and seafood.

It has some consumers wary.

On Tuesday, Sally Farr, an elementary school teacher, left a St. Petersburg dollar store with a gift bag made in China. But she wondered whether it was time to boycott Chinese-made products.

"Certainly with all the hoo-ha going on, it does make you wonder what you're eating and using today," said Farr, 60. "It's scary."

The dollar store that Farr had just visited still stocked Chinese-made toothpaste.

Unaware of recall

More than a month after the FDA's toothpaste warning, the St. Petersburg Times found Chinese-made toothpaste in eight discount stores, mostly mom-and-pop dollar stores. Two stores - LaFrance's store in St. Petersburg and Fu-Bo Dollar Store in Tampa - carried brands that the FDA had confirmed contain the dangerous chemical. At least two distributors of the low-cost toothpaste are in Florida, but neither returned phone calls. Both companies have issued recalls.

The Fu-Bo Dollar Store at Nebraska and Fowler avenues in Tampa carried more than a dozen tubes of the recalled Crescent toothpaste. A man who said he was the owner but refused to give his name said he had not heard of the recall, then tossed all of the boxes in a wastebasket behind his counter.

Sam Saqer, owner of Sam's Beauty Supply in Tampa, said he had heard that there was a Colgate knockoff that was recalled and he had made sure none of that toothpaste was on his shelves. But he had no idea that the FDA wanted stores to stop selling all Chinese toothpaste. The store on Busch Boulevard still had on its shelves a children's toothpaste called Animal Kingdom that was made in China.

"I will find out about this if all the toothpaste has to be pulled," Saqer said.

Family Dollar, the large chain of dollar stores, said it had not heard anything from the FDA about removing Chinese-made toothpaste from its shelves. It had a Marvel Heroes toothpaste manufactured in China in several of its local stores.

Kiley Rawlins, a spokesperson for the chain, said the store had tested the brand in June and found less than 0.01 percent of diethylene glycol.

State health inspectors in Massachusetts and Rhode Island have found and removed tainted toothpaste in stores in a dozen towns across the Northeast.

But Florida public health officials are relying on federal authorities to get the word out about the recalled toothpaste.

"We don't go in and take things off the shelves," said Kevin Cate of the state Department of Health. "This is a federal operation. We're getting the message out to consumers, though, that they should be aware of the toothpaste on that list."

The FDA is continuing to test toothpaste from China. So far, more than a dozen varieties have been found to contain diethylene glycol. Chronic use can lead to liver and kidney disease, and ingesting too much can be fatal.

"At this point, we consider this a risk to public health based on our findings, and we are being vigilant in our enforcement efforts and to make the public aware of the risk," said FDA spokesperson Kimberly Rawlings.

Products are all over

LaFrance said he's worried about how all the recalls will affect his store. He said he paid about 45 cents for the Crescent toothpaste and sold it for $1. He gazed around his store at an avalanche of Chinese-made goods, from key chains and costume jewelry to souvenirs and baby rattles.

"If I was to go with everything American-made," he said, "I'd be hurting."

Author Sara Bongiorni of Baton Rouge, La., recently released a book chronicling her family's attempt to go a year without buying products from China. Efforts to find small things like birthday candles and sneakers for her 4-year-old son turned into sagas, she wrote in A Year Without 'Made in China.' Bongiorni ended up paying $70 for a pair of sneakers made in Italy and went without candles. Things around the house broke down and couldn't be replaced, she said.

"So many basic items come from China that if you wanted to try something like this permanently, it would mean if your telephone broke, you couldn't buy a new phone," said Bongiorni, 42. "So we really learned how closely connected at the individual level we are to China's export economy."

Times researcher Angie Drobnic Holan contributed to this story. Times staff writer Leonora LaPeter Anton can be reached at lapeter@sptimes.com or (727) 893-8640.

[Last modified July 12, 2007, 00:51:44]