Coca-Cola Agrees to Remove Benzene from Soda
By Chris Baskind in Health
Coca-Cola has agreed to remove ingredients found in some of its soft drinks which might combine to produce carcinogenic benzine.
Benzene — in soda? It’s true: many bottled soft drinks and related beverages contain benzene, a well-known carcinogen. Benzene is a major industrial contaminant: a powerful solvent sometimes used in the manufacture of plastics. You take in a fair amount every day through air pollution and in drinking water.
Coca-Cola and other bottlers aren’t putting it there on purpose, of course. But the U.S. Food and Drug Administration has known for almost fifteen years that potassium benzoate and sodium benzoate — commonly used as preservatives in soda drinks — can react with the ascorbic acid, which is also added to ensure product freshness. The result is benzene.
How much benzene? More than is safe or necessary. The EPA defines a safe level of benzene as zero. In tap water, levels should not exceed 5 parts per billion.
The Environmental Working Group, a watchdog organization, found levels of benzene in soft drinks at levels between 5 and 138 parts per billion. The amount depends on how much heat and light to which the drinks are exposed. Levels of between 5 and 15 ppb are not uncommon.
The FDA met with beverage industry representatives to discuss the problem over ten years ago, and charged them with finding a voluntary means to solve the problem. But not much was done, even after wide-scale recalls due to benzene contamination in the summer of 1998. It took a lawsuit to get the attention of Coca-Cola, Pepsi, Sunny Delight, and other several companies.
This week, Coca-Cola announced they had agreed to settle their portion of the suit and remove benzene from its product lines. They’ve already reformulated Vault Zero and Fanta Pineapple.
Monday’s agreement applies only to Coca-Cola.
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