Perrigo’s Pills Pose Problems

By Sean Corbett in News on Nov 10, 2006 6:09PM

If you noticed anything especially magnetic about your stomach or its contents, it’s probably due to your diet of cheap booze and off-brand pain relievers. Perrigo Company has announced a recall for many millions of bottles of the pain reliever acetaminophen. Perrigo’s product is sold by hundreds of retailers as their store brand; at Wal-Mart they are called “Equate Extra Strength Pain Reliever.” It’s also sold at CVS, but not at Walgreens. Hopefully Perrigo can recoup some of its losses by selling the recalled product to Monsieur Mangetout (Mr. Eat-everything) from France. We hear he’s been looking for a change in his regular diet of bicycles and airplanes.

But seriously, the likelihood that a specific bottle of pills has metal in it is low. The company found metal in 200 of 70 million pills tested. That’s less than one problem pill in 300,000. People living in the US are more likely to be struck by lighting during their lifetime than that. As the average size of the contamination is two grains of salt, Chicagoist is seriously considering taking our chances on this one rather than cleaning out the whole medicine cabinet. The FDA has more information on specific brands and lot numbers just to be sure.

The company has a history of recalling contaminated product; last time it was due to acrylic mirror particles in a sleep aid/pain reliever product. Perrigo has issued 32 recalls in the past 13 years, and while such a high number does suggest somebody needs to do a little better quality control, at least they’re being honest.

Photo credit goes to rodrigo senna.