The prosecution summoned an executive of Oxy Reckitt Benckiser, the large producer of humidifier disinfectants, Tuesday, for questioning over deaths from the use of the disinfectants. Prosecutors reportedly plan to summon nearly 100 officials from manufacturers implicated in the “humidifier murder’’ case.
On Monday, Lotte Mart, a disinfectant supplier, offered an official apology and vowed to provide due compensation to the victims and their families. Lotte Mart was the first company to apologize and announce a compensation plan among the manufacturers and sellers involved in the scandal since it emerged in August 2011.
The key point in this investigation is to prove the existence of intentionality on the part of the manufacturers. In other words, the probe will be focused on confirming if they had produced and distributed the disinfectants in question, even knowing they were harmful. The prosecution is expected to indict company officials on charges of accidental homicide if their intentionality is proven.
Health authorities shocked the nation in 2011 by announcing that polyhexamethylene guanidine (PHMG), a chemical contained in humidifier disinfectants, was responsible for severe lung illnesses that claimed the lives of more than 100 people. The (Korea) Centers for Disease Control and Prevention acknowledged 530 victims, including 143 deaths, in 2014 after its own investigation, but civic groups claim that 1,281 people were victimized, including 225 deaths, mainly pregnant women and children.
Lotte Mart sold Wiselect, its private-brand sterilizer, between November 2006 and August 2011. Among those who used the Lotte product, 22 people died. Oxy was blamed for 103 deaths.
The debacle involving the humidifier sterilizer is attributed to the government’s slow response and companies’ shirking of responsibility.
The 2011 epidemiological investigation pinpointed disinfectants as the cause of the deaths, but the health authorities didn’t do anything except ban their sales. Although victims filed a complaint in 2012, the prosecution halted its investigation just because the final epidemiological results had not come out.
Oxy, in particular, is suspected of trying to fabricate the results of a test it entrusted to a university lab to refute the government’s investigation results. Circumstantial evidence points strongly to acts of bribery.
What is needed first is to let the victims and their families receive due compensation, although the apology was belated. That’s the least the companies can do to lessen the pain inflicted on the victims.
Prosecutors should get to the bottom of the case to confirm whether Oxy and other companies sold the “murderous disinfectants’’ despite knowing of their harmfulness, and then have them pay the rightful price.