Historical Cases of Contamination With Diethylene Glycol
Glycerine and diethylene glycol are similar in appearance, smell, and taste. The US Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act was passed following the 1937 "Elixir sulfanilamide" incident of poisoning caused by diethylene glycol contamination of medicine.
On May 4, 2007, the US Food and Drug Administration advised all US makers of medicines to test all batches of glycerine for the toxic diethylene glycol. This followed an occurrence of hundreds of fatal poisonings in Panama resulting from a Chinese factory deliberately falsifying records in order to export the cheaper diethylene glycol as the more expensive glycerol.
Read more about this topic: Glycerol
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