Blister packaging services offer the pharmaceutical industry an incredibly efficient, tamper-proof way to package products. So protective is blister packaging that many consumers often have difficulties opening them, leading them to wonder why it is that these packages need to be so tough.
Unfortunately, it’s because there are people out there who want to tamper with the package’s content for one reason or another. Blister packaging is so resilient because it has to be — because it has to keep these people out.
To help give you a better idea of what might happen if blister packaging was easier to open, here are a few cases of product tampering that may shock you.
Fentanyl.
Back in 1998, a cardiac ICU in the United Arab Emirates dealt with an outbreak of the bacteria Serratia marcescens. An investigation found that the bacteria came from vials of tampered fentanyl, a strong drug. A therapist had extracted the fentanyl for himself to use as a narcotic and had replaced the drug with water contaminated with Serratia marcescens.
Girl Scout Cookies.
Not even Girl Scout cookies were safe from product tampering. Back in 1984, door to door sales suffered when foreign objects were found in cookie boxes in at least 17 different states. Even though tamper-proofed packaged were introduced the next year, sales still declined by 25 percent.
Bottled Water.
About 30 Italian citizens drank bottled water that’d been contaminated with such chemicals as bleach, acetone, or ammonia, and were sent to the hospital. Despite the seemingly tamper proof design of the bottles, the perpetrator had injected small quantities of the poisonous liquids underneath the cap.
Blister packaging companies need to ensure that nobody can tamper with the product encased, which is why blister packaging designs are so often difficult to open. If they weren’t so protective, then who knows what could have been done to the products within.
If you have any questions about product tampering, feel free to ask in the comments.
