Loading ...A fourth carcinogen has been found in America’s supply of blood pressure drugs.
The US and Europe have faced severe shortages of heart medications since last summer, when it emerged that millions of people (at least a million Americans, and another million in Europe) were taking pills laced with cancer-causing chemicals.
The chemicals were traced back to quality control failings at factories in China and India, which cheaply and efficiently produce two-thirds of drug ingredients in the world.
Officials and pharmaceutical companies were forced to pull most heart drugs from the US, leaving millions of people to choose between contaminated drugs or nothing.
Earlier this year, as the shortage dragged on, the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) released a list of safe alternatives.
But today, a new FDA filing reveals those, too, appear to have been contaminated with another, previously undetected chemical: dimethylformamide (DMF), a solvent which is used in plastics, pesticides, and synthetic leathers.