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Abstract
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China's State Food and Drug Administration (SFDA) checked 33 capsule medicine products, with 23 out of the 42 samples found to have excessive chromium -- a toxic heavy metal.
Testing of capsule samples marketed in Beijing and Jiangxi, Jilin and Qinghai provinces, among other areas showed that a total of 13 types of medicines from nine pharmaceutical factories were tainted.
The Chinese Pharmacopoeia, amended in 2010, permits no more than 2 milligram of chromium per 1 kilogram of medicine. However, the toxic capsules involved were found to have a chrome content of over 90 times the national standard in some cases.
Hebei Xueyang Glair and Gelatin Factory used dirty leather leftovers (that are supposed to be used to manufacture leatherwear) to make the gelatin supplied to pharmaceutical companies. The leather was processed with calcium oxide and industrial acid base.
The outbreak of the toxic capsule crisis during April 2012 aroused widespread public concern about the risk of chromium-contaminated capsules and drug safety in China. In this article, we develop a conceptual model to investigate risk perceptions of the pharmaceutical drug capsules and behavioral responses to the toxic capsule crisis and the relationship between associated factors and these two variables. An online survey was conducted to test the model, including questions on the measures of perceived efficacy of the countermeasures, trust in the State FDA (Food and Drug Administration), trust in the pharmaceutical companies, trust in the pharmaceutical capsule producers, risk perception, concern, need for information, information seeking, and risk avoidance. In general, participants reported higher levels of risk perception, concern, and risk avoidance, and lower levels of trust in the three different stakeholders. The results from the structural equation modeling procedure suggest that perceived efficacy of the countermeasures is a predictor of each of the three trust variables; however, only trust in the State FDA has a dampening impact on risk perception. Both risk perception and information seeking are significant determinants of risk avoidance. Risk perception is also positively related to concern. Information seeking is positively related to both concern and need for information. The theoretical and policy implications are also discussed.
Language: en |