Amazon sold 99% strength sodium nitrite for years after families notified the company about misuse of the product as a suicide agent, according to legal documents.
SEATTLE — The retail giant Amazon missed years-long opportunities to pull a chemical with a documented history of being used by young people to end their lives, the KING 5 Investigators found.
Amazon sold 99% strength sodium nitrite, a common meat preservative, for years after red flags came into the company about the misuse of the product as a suicide agent, according to legal documents. Amazon pulled the product from its site in October 2022 – six years after the first recorded online complaint from a grieving parent.
Sodium nitrite is used as a meat preservative for products such as beef jerky at a concentration of 6%. But Amazon sold the product at 99% purity to the public, even though at that strength there is no known household use. Only hospitals and laboratories would have …