GHB in Kids' Toys?

The money squandered on protecting our borders (by not examining practically all of the shipping containers coming into this country) could be better spent quality checking our imports.

Japan's handling of Chinese imports has been working very well for years. We would probably get good results and save money by having Chinese stuff shipped to Japan, and what passes Japan's inspections could then be shipped to us.

The next time an American-made product is recalled here in Australia I'll be sure and use it to condemn all American goods.

China exports what - $150 billion worth of goods to the US every year?

What proportion of that trade do the recalled products represent?

How does that compare with say the safety-related recalls of Japanese vehicles and Bridgestone tyres as a proportion of Japanese trade with the US?

Ian, I think the more alarming issue is the frequency at which chinese made products have been discovered to be poisonous or dangerous. Toothpaste, kids toys, dog food....It makes sense to stop and question what exactly has changed in Chinese manufacturing and perhaps say "wait a minute, something's seriously wrong here.

It certainly makes me wonder when 4 recalls ( that I can remember) relate to issues of chemicals in manufacturing, and more specifically, what's being used in products designed for consumption, or that small kids might be using.

My first guess is that the beads contain (traces of) gamma-butyrolactone, which is commonly used as a solvent (for cleaning VCR heads and suchlike, IIRC).

Frankly, this article is so alarmist as to be useless. What was the chemical, and how much was present? Inquiring minds want to know, and we aren't satisfied with the repeated proclamation that "it's metabolized into a date rape drug! Date rape! Date rape!"

Medically speaking, GHB itself doesn't appear any worse than alcohol. Mixing it with alcohol causes a nasty syngergy between two CNS depressants — that's what is most likely to get somebody killed, by far.

I expect you're exactly right about that, Blake. GBL is actually a fairly common solvent, and it's about as dangerous as EtOH.

You know, speaking of hysteria, 6-7 years ago, GHB wasn't a controlled substance, and there were also absolutely no cases of GHB ever being used as a date rape drug. Those stories were pretty much concocted to build support for adding it to the controlled substances list. As you can imagine, it's pretty damn hard to conceal a couple mLs of the horribly-vile tasting stuff in anything, even a fruity chick drink.

I'm not much for conspiracy theories, but many of the same things they say about why marijuana was made illegal(it being cheap and readily available) hold true for GHB as well.

Mike, as science bloggers, we have to hold ourselves to a higher standard and use information and our knowledge to clear away the hype. Besides, all this focus on China recently is just economic guerilla warfare, isn't it?

Nico,

Clearly, defective products are a cause for concern.

The question is, how much concern is appropriate and is the media conducting a beat-up?

My knowledge of chemistry is limited to high school classes from thirty years ago but Blake's comments suggest the risk here is minimal.

Similarly, the largest of the recent toy recalls was due not to lead in paint or other Chinese failings but due to the defective and unsafe design of the toys by Hasbro in the US.

(Hasbro announced a small recall due to lead paint one day with maximum publicity; the very next day they announced the recall of a much-larger number of toys due to the presence of dangerous magnets which was a design defect they'd known about for months. The ensuing media reports focused on the "Chinese-made" toys when all toys made anywhere with that design defect were being recalled.

Those toys were exported all over the world by Hasbro, I didn't see many "The Americans are killing our kids" stories or blog entries here in Australia as a result.

I also didn;t see the US media questioning the safety of the entire American agriculture sector after botulism; salmonella and BSE scares over the last few years.

Mr. Gunn:

You know, speaking of hysteria, 6-7 years ago, GHB wasn't a controlled substance, and there were also absolutely no cases of GHB ever being used as a date rape drug. Those stories were pretty much concocted to build support for adding it to the controlled substances list. As you can imagine, it's pretty damn hard to conceal a couple mLs of the horribly-vile tasting stuff in anything, even a fruity chick drink.

A young female friend of mine once enrolled in a rape-prevention class. One day, the instructor said, "Today we'll be talking about date rape drugs." He dropped a few names, and then got down to the details: "GHB is a colorless, odorless, tasteless chemical —"

At which point, my friend fell out of her chair, gut-laughing.

I'm not much for conspiracy theories, but many of the same things they say about why marijuana was made illegal(it being cheap and readily available) hold true for GHB as well.

It does seem awfully strange to demonize a chemical and then turn around and say in the next breath, "Guns don't kill people! People kill people!"

Alcohol is a common date-rape drug. Much more common than GHB, and besides, Rohypnol was called the "date-rape drug" first.

Putting the rhetorical terms to one side, it's a very bad thing for children to be dosed with (what appears to have been) 1,4 Butyrolactone by their toys.

1,4 butanediol, rather.

thanks