MSNBC did a report on the Consumer labs testing of multivitamins.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/16655168/

You have to subscribe to Consumer labs to find out the whole report.  Does anybody have the results?  NOW is a big brand in my neighborhood since its HQ is here.  I’m curious how they ranked.  I use NAP multivitamins, but if I need something else, I use NOW.

Posted: 1/19/07      

Twelve multivitamins failed our tests! Find out which passed or failed now.

Alphabetical list of brands for the 39 products in this report
AARP                                            Pet-Tabs
Centrum                                       Pharmanex
Dr. Fuhrman Pixie-Vites                  Pregnancy Plus — Dr. Grunebaum
Flintstones                                     Puritan's Pride
Floradix (Salus-Haus)                      Swanson
Healthy Moments Vitamin Strips       The Greatest Vitamin in the World
Kirkland (Costco)                           The Vitamin Shoppe
Member's Mark (Sam's)                  21st Century Pet Nutrition
Nature's Bounty                             TwinLab (IdeaSphere)
Nature's Plus                                 Vitamin World
NOW                                            WEIL
Nutrilite                                        WinFuel
One A Day (Bayer)                        Yummi Bears (Hero Nutritionals)
One Source (Perrigo)        

Here are some comments from the MSNBC article:

The Vitamin Shoppe Multivitamins Especially for Women, was contaminated with lead.

Several of the most popular multivitamins on the market did pass muster: Centrum Silver, Member's Mark Complete Multi (distributed by Sam's Club), One A Day Women's and Flintstones Complete.

The analysis also showed that Hero Nutritionals Yummi Bears, a multivitamin for children, had 216 percent of the labeled amount of vitamin A in the retinol form, delivering 5,400 International Units (IU) in a daily serving. That's substantially more than the upper tolerable level set by the Institute of Medicine of 2,000 IU for kids ages 1 to 3 and 3,000 IU for those 4 to 8.

The ConsumerLab.com report also found that some vitamins didn't break apart within the 30-minute standard set by the United States Pharmacopeia. Nature's Plus Especially Yours for women required more than an hour to disintegrate, while AARP Maturity Formula took 50 minutes.

In other findings, Eniva VIBE, a multivitamin liquid sold in packets, had only 54 percent of the claimed vitamin A.

ConsumerLab.com also tested a vitamin marketed for dogs called Pet-Tabs Complete Daily Vitamin-Mineral Supplement for Dogs and found the product was contaminated with 1.4 micrograms of lead per tablet.

thanks for the heads up!

Sorry RL, I'm not a member either.  Would be interesting to see the results.

About the pills not breaking apart:
One of our local city sewer workers has said that he sees direct evidence of thousands of $ worth of vitamins flushed down the drain when they do cleaning/maintenance on the sewers.  He says he can still read the printing on many of them, and one he sees often is centrum.  

I read somewhere that a good test for disolving is to put a pill in a glass of white vinegar for 30 min, and if it is not breaking down at that point, it won't break down in your system.  I've tried it on a number of pills, there sure are huge differences.

I heard about this on the news.  They did indicate though, that they did not test each brand extensively....I could have sworn that they said they only tested one "lot" from each company, where the ideal testing would be many lot batches.

You’re right, testing from more than one lot tested would have been better.  They did send them without labels, to two independent laboratories.

But if they find a problem with even one bottle, then I’d be wary of their whole product line.

I wish somebody on this board had more information on the results than the news stories told us.  We just get snippets of info.