J&J Says Latest Drug Recalls Involved 3 Million Bottles

Johnson & Johnson provided additional details on Friday about its two most recent recalls of Tylenol and other over-the-counter drugs, saying the actions on Thursday and June 15 involved a total of about 3 million bottles of the medicines.

The company announced the latest recall on Thursday, involving 21 lots of medications - including Tylenol for children and adults, several forms of Benadryl allergy tablets and painkiller Motrin. But it did not disclose the number of affected bottles.

"We shipped approximately 2.5 million bottles of the affected lots involved in yesterday's recall," a company spokeswoman said on Friday, following media criticism about the dearth of information.

The company recalled four lots of Benadryl and one lot of Extra Strength Tylenol gels on June 15, also without specifying the number of bottles involved. On Friday, it said that recall totaled about 500,000 bottles.

Both recalls were related to, but are in addition to, the company's Jan. 15 recall of 53 million bottles of widely used products, J&J said. They were all linked to odors traced to a chemical in pallets used to transport and store the medicines.

Excluding the two recent actions related to the Jan. 15 recall, McNeil has issued four product recalls in the past year due to quality control problems at its plants, sparking a congressional investigation and scrutiny from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.

One of McNeil's three main factories, located in Ft. Washington, Pa., has been closed while the company addresses problems cited by the FDA.