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Take a look at your vitamin C bottle. Chances are it doesn’t say where it was produced. But since vitamin C from China makes up at least 80% of the world’s supply, most likely yours comes from there. Some experts estimate the Chinese market share to be 90%. In fact, the Washington Post reports that there are no longer any manufacturers of vitamin C in the United States, and only one in the Western world. (I was told, however, by Nutribiotic, that their Meta C product is manufactured in the United States.)

Chinese pharmaceutical companies also have taken over much of the world market in the production of antibiotics, analgesics, enzymes and primary amino acids.

Peter Kovacs, a management consultant to many large food ingredient companies, wrote in the Washington Post:

Western companies have had to invest heavily in Chinese facilities. These Western-owned plants follow strict standards and are generally better managed than their locally owned counterparts. Nevertheless, 80 percent of the world’s vitamin C is now manufactured in China — much of it unregulated and some of it of questionable quality.

Should we be concerned? That’s what I’ve been trying to determine after I found out that I too use vitamin C from China. I didn’t know that until I called my vitamin C company’s office headquarters in the United States. The line from the 1986 movie, The Fly, keeps going through my mind, “Be afraid, be very afraid.” This is one of the side effects of globalization.

When I learned from National Public Radio that earlier this year, lead-contaminated multi-vitamins showed up on the shelves of U.S. retailers, I started speculating about all the vitamin C from China. In China, leaded gasoline is still used in automobiles and is a major source of pollution, Does that lead to trace amounts of lead in vitamins manufactured there? It’s a possibility, depending on the production and quality standards. But how high are the standards? Apparently not very high.

For example, the Washington Post reported that earlier this spring, “Europe narrowly averted disaster when a batch of vitamin A from China was found to be contaminated with Enterobacter sakazakii, which has been proved to cause infant deaths.”

When I read an article in Time this week about concerns of food safety in China, I became even more concerned. Here is a quote from the Time article:

“Yes, there are now some problems of food safety of Chinese products. However, they are not serious. We should not exaggerate those problems,” Li Dongsheng, vice minister for the State Administration for Industry and Commerce, told reporters.

That prompted me to call the distributor of the sodium ascorbate that I take. (And I take a lot.) At first, the woman I spoke to said it came from Utah. But she put me on hold to confirm. When she came back, she told me it came from China but that it was of pharmaceutical grade quality. But that wasn’t much reassurance. It seems reminiscent of what happened in Panama.

Do you remember the Panamanian fever medicine tragedy that killed at least 51 people? Do you know how it happened? Drums of the poisonous solvent and antifreeze, diethylene glycol, were labeled as the harmless additive glycerin and shipped abroad by unregulated Chinese chemical companies. The poison was cheaper than the glycerin it replaced. According to Associated Press, between 1990 and 1998, similar incidents of diethylene glycol poisoning reportedly occurred in Argentina, Bangladesh, Haiti, India and Nigeria, killing hundreds.

Here is what a New York Times investigation revealed:

The counterfeit glycerin passed through three trading companies on three continents, yet not one of them tested the syrup to confirm what was on the label. Along the way, a certificate falsely attesting to the purity of the shipment was repeatedly altered, eliminating the name of the manufacturer and previous owner. As a result, traders bought the syrup without knowing where it came from, or who made it. With this information, the traders might have discovered — as The Times did — that the manufacturer was not certified to make pharmaceutical ingredients.

Are you afraid yet? Today my wife told me about a woman she met in a grocery store this week who had a severe mouth reaction to the toothpaste she had bought at a dollar store. The woman said she found out it was manufactured in China and that a recent news report stated that the toothpaste at that dollar store contained anti-freeze. It sounded too crazy to be true but another New York Times story confirmed it, and it had the same chemical that killed people in Panama last year when it turned up in cough syrup, mislabeled by Chinese manufacturers as a harmless sweetener. Here is what the New York Times reported:

Consumers were advised yesterday to discard all toothpaste made in China after federal health officials said they found Chinese-made toothpaste containing a poison used in some antifreeze in three locations: Miami, the Port of Los Angeles and Puerto Rico.

Although there are no reports of anyone being harmed by the toothpaste, the Food and Drug Administration warned that the Chinese products had a “low but meaningful risk of toxicity and injury” to children and people with kidney or liver disease.

The United States is the seventh country to find tainted Chinese toothpaste within its borders in recent weeks.

How is it that China now produces 90% of the world’s vitamin C supply? By under pricing the competition. In 2005, the world’s second largest producer of vitamin C, BASF closed down its plant in Denmark due to the continued downward spiral of vitamin C prices. They were impacted by the drop in wholesale prices of vitamin C since 1995 from over $15 per kg to under $4 per kg. In China, two companies now manufacture 60 percent of the world’s supply. And a slew of smaller companies in China make up 30% of the world’s supply. And that is where the concern comes in.

Here is what Peter Kovacs says about it. “The industry in China is bifurcated between top-notch companies that are highly skilled and do all the right things, and the second- and third-tier producers, some of which are just sloppy bucket shops.”

That’s a bit disconcerting. But then I heard that China’s former chief of the state Food and Drug Administration, Zheng Xiaoyu, took $832,000 in bribes (he was given the death sentence) to let unsafe drugs on the market. Do I see a trend here?

Here is an excerpt by The Economist:

Amid the international uproar over tainted Chinese products, there was little surprise when the court imposed the death sentence when he was found guilty. But for regulators still trying to save their necks, they now have the unenviable task of sifting through all the drugs and pharmaceutical firms approved for licenses under Mr. Zheng in an attempt to make sure they did not breach standards.

And this is all on top of the recent pet food scandal. A dog, belonging to friends of ours, recently died, and our friends suspect it is due to this. His dog food was recalled, but in their case, too late. How is it possible for melamine, a chemical used to make plastics, fertilizer and surface coatings, to end up in some of the leading American pet food brands?

Again, I quote from Time:

The pressure has increased in recent months as U.S. inspectors have banned or turned away Chinese exports including wheat gluten tainted with the chemical melamine, blamed for dog and cat deaths in North America. Monkfish containing life-threatening levels of puffer fish toxins, drug-laced frozen eel and juice made with unsafe color additives have also been on the growing list of unacceptable products.

All of this helps to paint a picture of a Chinese food and safety system contaminated by greed and profits at the expense of public safety. And that is a problem that has grown to epidemic proportions. Since we get nearly all of our vitamin C from China, as well as other supplements, we need to be vocal. As consumers, we don’t have many options beyond telling the vitamin companies we do business with that we want proof of high quality standards. The ones that comply will get the biggest market share. And that might be the incentive needed that will keep us safe.

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