Tylenol Tainted Months Ago, FDA Speculates

The commissioner of the federal Food and Drug Administration said Saturday that cyanide in the Extra-Strength Tylenol capsules that killed 23-year-old Diane Elsroth could have been placed there months ago.

A spokesman for Johnson & Johnson, Tylenol’s manufacturer, said the company was working through the weekend, reviewing the personnel files of about 30,000 employees in the United States.

An FBI spokesman said there were no suspects, but agents across the nation were working on the case. The FDA, however, said it still appeared that the tampering was a local matter.

FDA Commissioner Dr. Frank Young said that sophisticated scientific analysis had determined that the poison was 90% potassium cyanide that “can exist for several months” without destroying the gelatin capsule as investigators had previously suggested.

“We just don’t know how long,” he added.

John A. Norris, the FDA’s deputy commissioner, said the cyanide could have been in the capsule more than 30 days. “But ‘it could have’ has to be emphasized,” he said.

Local Tampering Suspected

Young said the agency still considers the poisoning a case of local tampering. “There is no evidence that would make it other than a local matter,” he said. “The coincidence of finding the two bottles a block apart most strongly indicates it is a local matter.”

The second bottle containing five poisoned Tylenol capsules was discovered in a store just two blocks from the supermarket in Bronxville, N.Y., where the first bottle was purchased. Elsroth took two capsules from the first bottle at the home of her boyfriend. She died Feb. 8 in Yonkers, N.Y., just north of New York City.

Westchester County Dist. Atty. Carl A. Vergari said that the bottle from which Elsroth took the Tylenol “was opened casually” in the home of her boyfriend and it appeared the bottle had not been tampered with after manufacturing. He said the second bottle also appeared not to have been invaded after it left the plant.

But there were no definite conclusions. “It is an investigation, extremely broad in scope, and we have not been able to narrow the focus,” the district attorney said. “We don’t have hard evidence to exclude any one single hypothesis.”

$100,000 Reward

Johnson & Johnson has offered a $100,000 reward for information leading to the arrest and conviction of those responsible for poisoning the capsules. A spokesman said the company was also scrutinizing the production, storage and distribution of Tylenol.

FBI agents and police in Westchester County plan to visit the plant in Pennsylvania where one of the bottles of Tylenol was made. The first bottle was produced in May in a plant in Fort Washington, Pa. The second bottle was manufactured in a plant in Puerto Rico in July. Both bottles were stored--at different times--in a warehouse in Montgomeryville, Pa.

The lot number of the bottle involved in Elsroth’s death was ADF916. The second bottle bore the lot number AHA090.

The FDA asked that anyone with Tylenol with those lot numbers call the agency’s nearest local field office.

“All local FDA offices, which are listed in telephone books, will be staffed or have someone available to arrange to pick up the bottles,” an FDA spokesman said.

John J. Goldman reported from New York and Marlene Cimons from Washington.