Tests prove unsafe tissue here

Gary Spaulding, Senior Gleaner Writer

Concerns about the quality of toilet tissue being sold locally heightened last week after local authorities found that the bacterial count on some tissue and paper towels was up to 30 times the allowable limit.

Following a Sunday Gleaner exposé on imported tissue, local authorities conducted tests and confirmed the reports with three shipments ordered returned or destroyed.

"The next stage is that the Customs should go on the shelves of the supermarkets and the hotels to test those products because the public is at great risk," suggested Prakash Vaswani, one of the country's leading manufacturers of toilet paper.

"All the Jamaica toilet paper manufacturers are grateful to The Gleaner for the role it has played in the public health of the nation," added Vaswani.

"As I understand, after The Sunday Gleaner article was published, the BSJ (Bureau of Standards Jamaica) and Customs established a joint task force to look into the matter and immediately began to do tests on all local and international products."

This was confirmed by the BSJ in a release issued late last week.

"In response to health and safety concerns expressed in a newspaper article regarding substandard toilet tissues being imported and in communication from the Jamaica Customs Department regarding the quality of toilet tissue and paper hand towel imports, the BSJ intensified its inspection and testing regimes, not only on imports of these products but also products manufactured locally.

"Preliminary tests done indicated high levels of bacteria among some samples. High bacteria load is indicative of poor manufacturing practices which could pose a risk to health and safety.

"This is substantiated by the Ministry of Health, who are now undertaking to increase their surveillance of local manufacturers of toilet tissue and paper hand towels, to ensure compliance to good manufacturing practices."

Industry insiders say with the (BSJ) findings released last week which confirmed that some imported tissue could be harmful, a high-level meeting involving customs and the health ministry officials is to be convened this week to look at measures to address this problem.

Rejected

The insiders say it is feared that some exporters are changing the brand names on tissues whenever they are rejected by local authorities.

In recent times the Customs Department has confiscated at least 10 shipments of imported toilet papers and hand towels and three of these tested positive for high bacterial load while four were cleared and the results of three tests are not yet in.

"Everything that we have said in terms of the quality of the imported products at least in the initial findings, the Jamaican manufacturers have been vindicated," said Vaswani.

He said, in light of these revelations, Jamaican manufacturers should cooperate even further with the Government to have the tissue industry elevated to a world standard basis to be able to compete anywhere in the world.