Angry in the Great White North

In the United States, Colgate-Palmolive and the FDA are dealing with the fallout of the discovery that toothpaste labelled "Colgate" and available for sale in dollar stores is counterfeit, and probably contaminated:

Colgate-Palmolive Co. is taking additional action regarding counterfeit toothpaste, a day after announcing the falsely packaged product could contain a poisonous chemical.

The products were found in discount stores in four U.S. states.

The New York consumer products company said it's contacting all its accounts handling Colgate toothpaste in the U.S.. At this time, none have reported counterfeit product.

Colgate is picking up suspected counterfeit products in the discount stores where it has reportedly been distributed

The company said according to Food and Drug Administration spokesman Doug Arbesfeld, diethylene glycol, the substance possibly contained in some of the counterfeit products, "is a low health risk but the bottom line is, it doesn't belong in toothpaste."

Colgate said the counterfeit product comes labeled as a 5-ounce or 100 ml tube, a size not made or sold by Colgate in the U.S. The packages say "Manufactured in South Africa," and may also have misspelled words including: "isclinically", "SOUTH AFRLCA" and "South African Dental Assoxiation."

I went to a local dollar store here in Ontario, Canada, and picked up a tube of Colgate, made in South Africa, and with misspellings on the packaging, though different from the misspellings reported in the United States.

Did I have a counterfeit tube? Should Canadian consumers be worried?

In a word, yes, but only a little bit.

The CSR was clear -- that tube is not a Colgate-Palmolive product. She took down the information about where the product was purchased, and is sending me prelabelled packaging to return the ersatz Colgate product to Colgate Canada.

I expect that Colgate will be moving in on the store to pick up the stock, just as in the US.

Is this tube dangerous? The CSR could not confirm that one way or the other. On the one hand, the lot seems to be different, quite possibly from a different knock-off manufacturer. On the other hand, it is not a Colgate product and Colgate cannot be sure what is in the tube, and strongly recommends not using the product, with the caveat that the risk in any case is very low.

What I'm really interested in is where was this stuff made and by whom? I think I have a line on that too.

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