By Kim Bo-eun
The government said Friday it would launch research into a wider range of health disorders to determine whether they have been caused by toxic humidifier disinfectants.
The move follows calls from victims, because up until now, the government has only recognized the causal link between the disinfectants and lung disorders. As such, it has only offered financial support to victims who had serious pulmonary inflammation, not to those with less serious lung diseases or other illnesses such as rhinitis or bronchial and cardiovascular damage.
The Ministry of Environment formed a committee to investigate the scandal and said it would collect opinions on the possibility of the development of disorders aside from lung damage. It will draw up the necessary standards to determine whether the symptoms were caused by the products.
“In order to expand the criteria, we need to conduct additional research in order to obtain evidence,” a committee member said.
The committee will conduct research with the National Health Insurance Service and the Health Insurance Review and Assessment Service into victims’ past health records and present illnesses.
Meanwhile, Butterfly Effect, a local maker of a humidifier disinfectant named Cefu, which allegedly caused lung damage in 27 people including 14 who died, was found to have made the product based on unverified information found on the Internet and from the list of chemicals listed on the Oxy Reckitt Benckiser label, according to the prosecution.
The Seoul Central District Prosecutor's Office summoned Oh, the former head of the company, Thursday, and confirmed he sold the products while failing to check their safety. Prosecutors plan to charge Oh with professional negligence resulting in death.
He established the company in 2005 as a self-claimed specialized company in infection prevention. The company made its own humidifier disinfectant after Oxy Reckitt Benckiser’s product became a hit.
Through the Internet, he learned about oligo(2-(2-ethoxy)ethoxyethyl guanidine chloride (PGH), a chemical which he decided to use instead of polyhexamethylene guanidine (PHMG), used by Oxy.
Although there were no records of experiments on PGH’s possibility of toxicity when inhaled, Oh assumed that PGH was safer than PHMG and made the disinfectant with it.
He told prosecutors that he made the product himself by mixing water and PGH. At the time Butterfly Effect was a small company with only about 10 employees. It did not have any expertise in manufacturing or research.
The product was sold for three years from 2009 to 2011 when the disinfectant scandal emerged.
It allegedly caused the third largest number of deaths following Oxy and Lotte Mart’s products which resulted in 70 and 16 deaths, respectively.