The New York Times covers the escalating zinc in denture cream scandal:

For 14 years until just last month, GlaxoSmithKline sold a denture cream called Super Poligrip that contained high levels of zinc.

The zinc helped with adhesion and was probably safe so long as people used moderate amounts of cream. Indeed, the human body needs small amounts of zinc to function. But some people ended up using much larger amounts, and they began to develop the kind of nerve damage associated with excess zinc.
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Either way, the evidence has become strong enough that last month GlaxoSmithKline — which also makes Tums, Nicorette and the country’s top-selling asthma drug — stopped making the version of Poligrip with zinc, after having previously resisted just such a move. In Japan, responding to regulators’ concerns, the company has also recalled from stores any remaining zinc-infused cream.

All of which makes you wonder: did it have to come this?

Every society needs to make a choice about how to prioritize consumer safety. If you try too hard to avoid problems, you can end up stifling daily life. Outlawing gasoline, for instance, would doubtless reduce pollution and respiratory disease, but no one is suggesting such a step. Europe, with its hostility to genetically modified foods, arguably errs on the side of being too cautious about chemicals and other such substances.

But the United States clearly seems to be on the other side of the line. We are not taking toxic risks seriously enough.

Unless we turn it around and re-invigorate the FDA and EPA, we are just going to keep poisoning ourselves so the wealthiest few can squeeze more money from the rest of us.

Disclosure: I am advising Blizzard, McCarthy and Nabers, a law firm that is helping the victims of denture cream poisoning.