Question:
Does someone have a report or basic
information on contaminated supplememnts
from outside of the US?
Answer:
There has been a lot of debate about
the issue of contaminated sports
and nutritional supplements. For
the benefit of the readers of this
board, I would like to share the
latest findings on this issue.
In many parts
of the world, the manufacture, labelling
and distribution of vitamins, sports
and nutritional supplements is not
controlled. These products are not
clified as foods and they are not
clified as pharmaceuticals both
of which have strict health
and safety standards that apply
to manufacture and labelling. The
vast majority of vitamins and nutritional
supplements are pefectly acceptable
for use by athletes and contain
no banned substances. In many cases
such prodcts may even have a health
benefot for some athletes.
The problem
is that in some countries, companies
that make vitamins, sports and nutritional
supplements also manufacture and
market other product lines that
do identifably contain banned substance.
A quick search of buy steroids in
any search engine will produce a
large number of legally available
products that are banned for use
in sports.
As there
are no government regulations or
quality control as to how any of
these products are made, the issue
of product quality and contamination
becomes an issue. This problem occurs
from poor quality control of raw
materials to failure to properly
clean production equipment between
product batches. The problem of
contamination is most acute with
companies that make both non-banned
products (ie vitamins) and banned
products (ie. body building products
containing steroid precursors) using
the same packaging equipment. Contamination
at the manufacturing line is a problem
for companies that do need to comply
with government regulations (note
this every time there is a food
product recall) but it is even more
acute with products such as sports
supplements for which no government
regulations exist at all.
Vitamins
manufactured by major pharmaceutical
companies clearly do follow pharmaceutical
grade manufacturing standards for
raw materials, mixing and bottling.
This issue is with small companeis
that make both non-bannd and banned
products on the same equipment.
A recent IOC study of 650 sports
supplements indicated that 25% contained
a banned substance that was not
on the label. The most common substance
found was traces of nandrolone.
Nandrolone is a common additive
to many commercially available body
building products that can be purchased
over the counter at local health
stores.
Athletes
have been warned and warned about
this issue for many years. Tennis
players have been given specific
and personal warnings for over 2
years. It is not new and ignorance
is not an acceptable excuse for
ingesting a banned substance in
this manner. Coria was suspended
for 7 months, lost ranking points
and was fined US$98K for failing
to take head of these widely distributed
warnings. Athletes who take such
supplements do so at their own professional
risk.
