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The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has announced that Johnson & Johnson has begun a voluntary nationwide of nearly 4 million bottles of Listerine Agent Cool Blue Plaque-Detecting Rinse because it is contaminated with bacteria.
So much for the “Listerine Fights Germs” slogan. I guess Listerine has met its match.
The concept of the rinse is cool: The blue coloring sticks to plaque showing kids where, how long, and how hard to brush their teeth. While the risk is said to be low in healthy people, the company says, “There could be a significant risk to individuals with weakened or depressed immune systems.”
The bacteria found included klebsiella oxytoca, which can cause urinary tract infections and blood poisoning; serratia marcecens, linked to blood stream infections; enterobacter cloacae, tied to respiratory infections; and pseudomonas fluorescens, which is harmless to most people, according to the Dallas News.
It will be interesting to see how Johnson & Johnson handles the PR and marketing of the recall. The company proved itself to be a deft reputation manager back in 1982, when a Tylenol cyanide tampering scare in Chicago killed seven people. J&J’s handling of the crisis is considered “a case study of how to deal with a brand crisis,” said Mark Bard, president of Manhattan Research. The company spend $100 million on the recall, back when that was a lot of money, and it took just a few months to regain consumer confidence.