2006 TOP TEN Number 4

Product safety concerns began back in April, when Walgreen Co., the No. 1 U.S. drugstore chain, told its stores to pull all ReNu products from its shelves, along with WalMart and most other major retailers and drug stores. Just days later Bausch & Lomb Inc. said it would stop shipping its ReNu MoistureLoc contact lens solution after some users were diagnosed with serious eye infections. And just two months ago, a major manufacturer of store-brand acetaminophen recalled 11 million bottles of the pain-relieving pills after discovering some were contaminated with metal fragments.

Even illegal drugs were not spared from the controversy. Forty-eight people died after using a dangerous combination of heroin or cocaine that was unkowingly spiked with the painkiller fentanyl (a pain killer with about 80 times the potency of morphine).

The Fall began with an E. Coli scare. The FDA imposed a ban on fresh spinach after Natural Selection's recalled more than 34 different brands of packaged spinach once people fell ill across 20 states after eating the green leafy vegetable. Then, less than a week after the FDA lifted its warning on fresh spinach grown in California's Salinas Valley, a popular brand of lettuce grown there was recalled over concerns about E. coli contamination. The lettuce did not however cause any illnesses.

And no one can forget Taco Bell; where dozens of people across several states were affected by an E. coli outbreak that was first reported in central New Jersey. Eight Taco Bells across the New York-New Jersey area were temporarily closed down for investigation. It took only days to discover that all the Taco Bells implicated were using the same food distributor, but narrowing it down to a precise product became a challenge. At first the fod chain removed all green onions from its menu. But a later report stated that lettuce was the most likely source of an outbreak of E. coli. In the end there were 71 confirmed cases of poisoning linked to Taco Bell and poll done by USA Today indicated that about 1 in 3 frequent fast-food customers say they plan to eat less often at Taco Bell — or not at all — as a result of the chain's recent E. coli outbreak.