Business

Philips Recalled Breathing Machines in 2021. Chemicals of “Concern” Found in Replacement Machines Raised New Alarm

On the morning of June 14, 2021, Dr. Radhika Breaden hurried to a computer in her hushed sleep disorders clinic and tried not to panic.

The 52-year-old physician treated patients with heart conditions, cancer and neurological diseases. She cared for veterans with compromised lungs and a woman with Down syndrome. In more than a dozen years of helping people breathe through the night, she had never confronted an emergency that jeopardized nearly all of her patients at once.

Global device maker Philips Respironics was pulling its popular sleep apnea machines and ventilators off the shelves after discovering that an industrial foam built into the devices to reduce noise could release toxic particles and fumes into the masks worn by patients.

Breaden scoured the internet for details, certain that Philips had a plan to quickly ship new, safe machines to the thousands of people under her care at the Portland, Oregon, clinic. “It’s a multibillion-dollar, multinational company,” she recalled telling her staff.

But as Philips publicly pledged to send out replacements, supervisors inside the company’s headquarters near Pittsburgh were quietly racing to manage a new crisis that threatened the massive recall and posed risks to patients all over again.

Read more at PROPUBLICA: https://www.propublica.org/article/philips-recall-machines-chemicals-of-concern

Reporters Desk

Recent Posts

Trump Drops the Hammer on Farmworkers

In addition, the new regulation allows growers to charge H-2A workers for housing, which they…

10 hours ago

Letters to the Editor: Toberman Seniors Rebuild Reputation, School Library Proposal, and Praise for “Art, Authenticity vs. Hypocrisy”

  Toberman Seniors Club Seeks to Restore Its Good Name Amid Unexplained Changes We, the…

10 hours ago

Becoming Daddy AF, Through Dance and Storytelling

At 65 years of age, Roussève stands, through his diagnosis, still performing, writing, creating and…

11 hours ago

Icon versus Caricature

The difference between being a true icon and a caricature is in the authenticity of…

12 hours ago

Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson to Lecture at CSUDH

Jackson will appear as a visiting lecturer at California State University, Dominguez Hills, this fall…

12 hours ago

Harbor Area ICE Watch

Today, a federal force again disappearing our neighbors, using our community as its base of…

13 hours ago