PRODUCT TAMPERING

Poisoned Tylenol

With their chalky consistency, pills are difficult for some people to swallow. Traditional over-the-counter pain relievers in a round shape often seem to stick in the throat and sometimes make taking the pill seem as unpleasant as the headache. Drug manufacturers thought they had solved the problem with their invention of gelatin capsules—two tubular shapes that fit together, enclosing the medicine, that slipped easily down the throat with a sip of water. But in 1982 disaster struck when seven Chicago-area residents died after taking Extra-Strength Tylenol capsules that an unknown person had laced with cyanide.

Copycat Poisonings

The incident led to a rash of copycat poisonings of other food and drug products, including Extra-Strength Tylenol laced with strychnine in California, mouthwash tainted with hydrochloric acid in Florida, and cold medicines, allergy remedies, and appetite suppressants spiked with rat poison. In response, the Food and Drug Administration mandated tamper-resistant packaging for over-the-counter drugs. Tylenol manufacturer Johnson & Johnson exceeded the FDA packaging requirements with a "triple safety seal." But in early 1986 a twenty-three-year-old woman died of cyanide poisoning in Yonkers, N.Y., after she took two capsules from a freshly opened bottle. The FBI announced in late February that its scientists had found that a determined and skillful individual could open and replace the triple seals of glued end flaps on the cardboard carton, a plastic shrink wrap over the cap, and an inner seal of foil over the mouth of the bottle.

Caplets

Tylenol was pulled from the shelves and Johnson & Johnson announced that it was discontinuing the manufacture and sale of the capsule form of its drugs. Instead, Tylenol would be produced only as tablets and "caplets"—tablets that were capsule-shaped and coated to be more easily swallowed. Both the American people and American corporations had to make new adaptations to face the complexity and uncertainty of the world of the 1980s.

Source:

Health &Medical Horizons 1986 (New York: Macmillan, 1986): 298-299.

PRODUCT TAMPERING

PRODUCT TAMPERING, the unauthorized altering of a consumer product without the knowledge of the product's owner or eventual user, is almost always treated as a threat to human health or safety, because it typically changes the contents of ingested products, such as foods or drugs, in a harmful manner. An exception to this pattern is fraudulently decreasing the odometer settings on used automobiles in an effort to increase the apparent value of a vehicle to a prospective buyer. Product tampering began in the 1890s. An especially bad case was the cyanide poisoning of Bromo Seltzer containers. The worst case of product tampering in America in the twentieth century happened in Chicago in 1982, when poison placed in packages of Tylenol killed seven people. Congress responded with the Federal Anti-Tampering Act of 1983, making it a crime to tamper with products or to make false claims of tampering. Tampering motives have included revenge, financial gain, and publicity for various causes. Tampering incidents have triggered false reports and copycat cases, both of which occurred in 1993 in response to a fabricated story that syringes were found in Pepsi-Cola cans. To combat tampering, manufacturers use science and technology to generate "tamper-evident" packaging and DNA testing to identify suspected tamperers.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Kilmann, Ralph H., and Ian I. Mitroff. Corporate Tragedies, Product Tampering, Sabotage, and Other Catastrophes. New York: Praeger, 1984.

Logan, Barry. "Product Tampering Crime: A Review." Journal of Forensic Sciences 38 (1993): 918–927.

MonroeFriedman