Cables show US officials pushed unsafe products in China for Baxter

At the time,China was under fire from the US and other nations for a host of toxic exports — everything from lead paint in toys to poisonous chemical substitutes for ingredients in medicine and pet food. In August of that year,Mattel alone was compelled to recall 20 million toys that had been manufactured in China.

Two years later,the cables show,the same US Congressmen — Mark Kirk,then a House Republican from Illinois,and Rick Larsen,a Democrat from Washington — returned to Beijing,only this time they had an entirely different message. Kirk and Larsen asked Chinese officials to look the other way as an American company failed to meet regulations restricting the use of a toxic chemical in medical equipment sold to Chinese hospitals.

The company,Baxter Healthcare,was making blood bags for intravenous delivery using polyvinyl chloride (PVC),a plastic softener that has been banned in some other parts of the world. A chemical found in PVC has been shown to build up in humans,causing developmental defects in children,among other things. The European Union banned the chemical in question — commonly known as DEHP — from all household products this year.

According to the diplomatic cables,China was seeking to do the same for its hospitals. Its regulators had already stipulated that new IV bags must be manufactured without PVCs. On behalf of Baxter,however,the two Congressmen pressed the Chinese commerce minister to buy time for the company,which was the third largest contributor to Kirk’s 2008 reelection campaign. In 2010 he was elected a senator,filling the vacant Illinois seat left by President Barack Obama.

Based in Deerfield,Illinois,Baxter International is a medical equipment maker best known for making vaccines and IV solutions,with annual revenue of $12.84 billion in 2010. The company has long denied that DEHP is harmful,though it has been making an alternative line of IV equipment free of the chemical in the US for some time.

For its part,the Chinese government has had restrictions in place on DEHP for over 20 years. In a meeting with China’s Minister of Commerce Chen Deming on May 31,2009,Kirk asked for more time for Baxter to meet China’s regulations,arguing that a crackdown on Baxter would hurt the company’s Shanghai plant.

The cable describing the meeting doesn’t convey the exact wording of Kirk’s request,but it does describe Chen’s response: He said that while he lacked the requisite technical knowledge,if additional time for phasing in a new regulation would help preserve employment in China and made economic sense,this would seem to be good. A note in the cable adds: “(US government) officials have raised this issue at a sub-ministerial level in the past with (the Ministry of Commerce).”