|
Not
enough being done about benzene in drinks
April 13, 2006
Suzanne Havala Hobbs
There’s
benzene in some soft drinks and other beverages sold in the
U.S., many of them consumed regularly by children.
That simple statement alone should be enough to prompt swift
and serious action by the federal government.
It hasn’t.
Drinks containing as much as 27 times the federal limit for
benzene in drinking water have been found on supermarket shelves,
according to the most recent government data publicly available
– from the Food and Drug Administration’s Total
Diet Study, which examined contaminant levels in beverages
sold between 1995 and 2001.
How can that be?
As I wrote last month, the Food and Drug Administration learned
nearly 15 years ago that two ingredients – ascorbic
acid and sodium benzoate or potassium benzoate – can
interact in products and form benzene, a carcinogen. Certain
conditions – heat and light – can accelerate benzene
production in drinks.
In the early 1990s, after first learning of this problem,
FDA entrusted industry to take voluntary steps to reduce the
benzene content of beverages. No public announcement was made.
I spoke last week with Mike Redman, vice president for scientific,
technical and regulatory affairs for the American Beverage
Association. Redman also worked as a soft drink industry representative
in the early 1990s and discussed the issue of benzene contamination
with FDA officials then.
Redman said that back then FDA did not dictate specific steps
for reducing benzene in drinks.
“The agreement was, because FDA is not product formulators,
either, and they’ll be the first to tell you that, that
they left that up to the industry to determine the best ways
for the individual products to lower those benzene levels,”
Redman said.
Whatever the agreement was between FDA and the soft drink
industry, the problem hasn’t been fixed.
Recent independent laboratory tests have found benzene in
soft drinks at levels higher than 5 parts per billion, the
maximum level allowed by the Environmental Protection Agency
in drinking water.
As a result, FDA has begun testing soft drinks again for benzene.
However, the agency isn’t releasing the data to the
public.
“To release all the data now could be confusing,”
Laura Tarantino, the FDA’s director of food additive
safety, told the Associated Press. “It’s not only
not good for companies; it’s not particularly good for
consumers. It doesn’t give them any useful information.
One of the misperceptions is that anytime you see ascorbic
acid and benzoate, you’re going to automatically have
high levels of benzene, and that just isn’t so.”
It may certainly be true that not all drinks containing the
combination of ascorbic acid and benzoates also contain benzene.
But we do know now that some of them do – and at levels
that would require sharp warnings if it were in your drinking
water.
(A list of beverages containing ascorbic acid and sodium benzoate
or potassium benzoate is available online at http://www.ewg.org/issues/toxics/20060228/list.php.)
In our modern, industrialized world it may be impossible to
avoid all exposures to contaminants such as benzene. The biggest
benzene exposures for most people come when filling up a gas
tank or driving in heavy traffic.
But that doesn’t excuse the presence of a toxic cancer-causing
substance in a manufactured product that’s entirely
optional in our diets.
But without attention to this problem from the media and our
elected representatives, FDA and the soft drink industry are
likely to reach another of their ineffective and soon-to-be-neglected
gentlemen’s agreements.
In which case consider this column your warning label.
|
