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Periodontal disease happens when the bacteria in dental plaque make their way into a person’s bones and blood stream.

Those bacteria can increase chances of pneumonia, osteoporosis, heart attack, stroke and premature low birth weight babies.

Studies show that having periodontal disease makes you twice as likely to get coronary artery disease as a person without periodontal disease.

Warning signs of periodontal disease to look for include bleeding gums, loose teeth, pain chewing, sensitivity, bad breath or a bad taste in your mouth.

To prevent the problem people should brush and floss twice a day, see your dentist at least every six months, eat a healthy diet and avoid tobacco.

View NBC video.

June 28, 2007
Wider Sale Seen for Toothpaste Tainted in China
By WALT BOGDANICH

After federal health officials discovered last month that tainted Chinese toothpaste had entered the United States, they warned that it would most likely be found in discount stores.

In fact, the toothpaste has been distributed much more widely. Roughly 900,000 tubes containing a poison used in some antifreeze products have turned up in hospitals for the mentally ill, prisons, juvenile detention centers and even some hospitals serving the general population.

The toothpaste was handed out in dozens of state institutions, mostly in Georgia but also in North Carolina, according to state officials. Hospitals in South Carolina and Florida also reported receiving Chinese-made toothpaste, and a major national pharmaceutical distributor said it was recalling tainted Chinese toothpaste.

The Food and Drug Administration has advised consumers to discard all Chinese-made toothpaste, regardless of the brand.

State officials in Georgia and North Carolina said all the tainted tubes were being replaced with brands made outside China. The officials said there had been no reports of illnesses caused by the toothpaste.

Officials of the Food and Drug Administration said toothpaste with even small amounts of the bad ingredient, diethylene glycol, a syrupy poison, had a “low but meaningful risk of toxicity and injury” for children and people with kidney or liver disease.

“This stuff does not belong in toothpaste, period,” a spokesman for the drug agency, Doug Arbesfeld, said. “No Chinese toothpaste has come into the country since the end of May.”

Since the Panamanian government found Chinese toothpaste with diethylene glycol in May, countries from Latin America to West Africa to Japan have seized the toothpaste.

Panama last year inadvertently mixed the poison made in China into 260,000 bottles of cold medicine, killing at least 100 people, prosecutors there said.

Diethylene glycol is often used in Chinese toothpaste in place of its more expensive chemical cousin glycerin. Chinese regulators have said that toothpaste with small amounts of diethylene glycol is not harmful and that international concern is unjustified.

After the drug agency expressed concern about tainted toothpaste, the Georgia Department of Administrative Services checked to see whether Chinese toothpaste was being used by the state. The department found it in 83 prisons, 4 mental health centers and 4 juvenile detention centers, said Rick Beal, contracts manager for the department.

Mr. Beal said officials confiscated 5,877 remaining cases, each with 144 tubes, of the Springfresh brand. Tests showed the toothpaste had a diethylene glycol concentration of about 5 percent, he said.

The state bought the toothpaste for about 9 cents a tube in 2002. Mr. Beal said he did not know how many tubes had been used.

There are no reports of harm resulting from the toothpaste, bought from a distributor, American Amenities in Seattle.

“We do not know who their manufacturer from China was,” Mr. Beal said.

A lawyer for American Amenities, Jesse Lyon, said it had recalled all suspect shipments of the product and had decided to stop importing Chinese toothpaste. Mr. Lyon said he believed that American Amenities had about 30 institutional customers, with Georgia being the largest.

A spokesman for the North Carolina Department of Corrections, George Dudley, said his agency estimated that it bought 22,000 tubes of Pacific brand Chinese toothpaste with a small amount of diethylene glycol from Pacific Care Products in San Francisco.

Pacific Care did not respond to a request for comment, but an executive wrote to North Carolina officials that the toothpaste came from Amercare Products, also in Seattle. A spokeswoman for Amercare declined to comment.

Chinese toothpaste containing “trace amounts” of diethylene glycol has also been recalled from healthcare institutions by McKesson, a major pharmaceutical distributor and health services company, said a spokesman, James Larkin.

Mr. Larkin said although this particular brand, McKesson EverFRESH, was not on the drug agency’s list of contaminated toothpaste, McKesson asked a laboratory to test it. When small amounts of diethylene glycol turned up, the company recalled the product, he said.

“We went back through our records, and every customer that ever bought the product was contacted,” Mr. Larkin said.

He added that on short notice he could not determine how many customers had bought the product.

One institution that did was Florida Hospital Waterman, a 200-bed institution in Tavares, Fla.

“We pulled that product,” Bonnie Zimmerman of the hospital said.

Ms. Zimmerman said that the toothpaste that replaced it also came from China and it had “trace amounts” of diethylene glycol. It, too, was removed, she said.

In South Carolina, four hospitals in the Greenville Hospital System also removed Chinese toothpaste, even though its distributor said it did not have diethylene glycol, said John Mateka, executive director of materials management for the group.

The FDA has identified the following brands of toothpaste, typically are sold at low-cost, “bargain” retail outlets. Here is a list:

Manufacturer: Goldcredit International Enterprises LTD Products: (MainStar America, Selective Imports, Donnamax)

* Dr. Cool Coolmint
* Superdent Coolmint
* Cooldent Coolmint
* Cooldent Spearmint
* Cooldent Fluoride Toothpaste
* Everfresh Assortment
* BrightMax
* DentaPro
* Dentakleen
* Dentakleen Junior Brand - Strawberry
* Dentakleen Junior Brand - Blueberry

Manufacturer: Gold Credit International Trading Co LTD Products:

* Bright Max Peppermint Flavor
* Clean Rite Toothpaste
* Clean Rite Toothpaste Kit
* Oralmax Extreme Action Kit
* Oral Bright Fresh Spearmint Flavor
* DentaKleen
* DentaKleen Junior
* DentaPro

Manufacturer: Suzhou City Jinmao Daily Chemicals Co. Ltd.
Product: (Gold City Enterprises/New Star, Miami, FL)

* ShiR Fresh Mint Fluoride Paste
* ShiRFresh Toothpaste
* ShiRFresh Mint
* ShiRFresh Ice Mint

Manufacturer Shanghai Light Industrial Products:
Freshh Spearmint (Following up with Mandalay International, Ogden, UT)

MFR Unknown:
Crescent Toothpaste (Dollar Ocean #4, Wheaton, MD and H&Y Trading Co, Capitol Heights, MD)
Naturabella nino Dusanzo (Certejenas Inc., Cidra, PR)

• Discount Counterfeits Can Be Dangerous (FORBES): Discount stores that scour the world for deals sometimes give shoppers something they didn’t bargain for: bogus products of uncertain origin that may even be dangerous. A prime example: this week’s recall of toothpaste believed to be both counterfeit and toxic.
• Lax oversight, globalization erode product safety (CNNMoney): Consumer safety advocates say not enough is being done to prevent unsafe products from reaching store shelves in the U.S.
• China sentences ex-official to death (CNNMoney): Zheng Xiaoyu, the former head of State Food and Drug Administration, was convicted of accepting bribes from drug companies. China sentenced the former head of its food and drugs agency to death for corruption in a surprise judgment as the government sought to contain a wave of scandals over health safety.
• FDA targets China toothpaste imports (CNNMoney): Move comes after shipments of product in the Dominican Republic, Panama found tainted with engine coolant chemical.
• Discount counterfeits can be dangerous (AP):Even though many bogus goods, including the toothpaste, have murky origins, signs point to overseas - and China in particular. China was the source of 81 percent of all phony goods seized in 2006, according to federal statistics. “We do not make it, we don’t import it, we just buy it from a guy,” said Chris Kim, manager of MS USA Trading Inc., the North Bergen, N.J., company that recalled the 100 cases of suspect toothpaste. A telephone message left for the source identified by Kim - a man he knows only as “Dialo” - was not immediately returned Thursday.

  Discount stores in particular can be an important outlet not only for fakes but other dangerous goods as well, federal officials said.

Want stuff you put in your mouth and give to children from an importer who “just buys it from a guy”?

Is it time to revisit “most favored nation” trade status?

A Food and Drug Administration official, Doug Arbesfeld, confirmed Wednesday that testing had found the chemical in a product with the Colgate label. But he said the agency is unsure if it is really Colgate or a counterfeit.

“We are aware that toothpaste is something that’s been counterfeited in the past,” he said. “We don’t want to alarm people unnecessarily.”

MS USA Trading, Inc. of North Bergen, New Jersey, said the toothpaste may contain diethylene glycol, a chemical found in antifreeze.

The company said the toothpaste, imported from South Africa, was sold in discount stores in New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania and Maryland.

“Made in South Africa” is printed on the box and the batch includes Regular, Gel, Triple and Herbal versions.

The trading company said the problem was discovered in routine testing by the Food and Drug Administration. It said no illnesses have been reported to date.

The same chemical has led to the recall of several brands of toothpaste imported from China in recent weeks.

Colgate-Palmolive issued a statement early Thursday saying the tubes are counterfeit.

The company said it does not use, nor has ever used, diethylene glycol as an ingredient in Colgate toothpaste anywhere in the world.

“Colgate does not import toothpaste into the United States from South Africa,” said the statement from Colgate-Palmolive Company. “In addition, the counterfeit packages examined so far have several misspellings including: `isclinically,’ `SOUTH AFRLCA’ and `South African Dental Assoxiation.’

“Counterfeit toothpaste is not manufactured or distributed by Colgate and has no connection with the company whatsoever,” the company said, adding that Colgate is working closely with the FDA “to help to identify those responsible for the counterfeit product.”