In its latest round of quality testing of supplements available on Amazon, supplement company NOW is reporting a number of quality and potency problems associated with several of the 19 glutathione products currently available to consumers on the platform.
 
Overall, the company said that quality has been improving since the company’s earlier rounds of product testing, such as SAMe and CoQ10, Curcumin, and Phosphatidyl Serine. However, of the products tested both at the company’s own quality labs and independently at Eurofins, HPLC analysis revealed three potency failures and two heavy metal issues. As per custom, NOW included both in-house and independent testing on its own brand in the group of products being examined.
 
NOW pointed to one brand, Emily Bright Formula, which labels Glutathione as 2,000 micrograms, not milligrams, which means that each capsule only contains 2 mg of glutathione, which is much lower than industry-standard dosages. Additionally, tests found that Emily Bright Formula’s glutathione only tested for 75% glutathione potency as claimed by this label.
 
Skin Whitening Glutathione from Northern Crown Cosmetics makes no label claim for glutathione content despite the product’s name, and it was found that there was an average of 20 mg per capsule.
 
Eco-Taste, a new brand made and sold direct from China, only had 55% of the glutathione content claimed by its label. Additionally, Amazing Nutrition’s glutathione supplements failed potency testing with only an average of 80% potency as claimed by the label.
 
Emily Bright and Northern Crown also failed heavy metal testing, and both tested above Prop 65-accepted levels for lead. The other 17 brands were all below Prop 65 levels.
 
“The quality of these lesser-known brands purchased on Amazon is greatly improved, but we are still finding unacceptable lapses,” Dan Richard, NOW’s vice president of Global Sales and Marketing, said.