WASHINGTON - A Food and Drug Administration survey has found high levels of benzene in five of the 100 drinks examined by it. There is a limit of 5 parts per billion for benzene that is considered safe in drinking water, but the FDA found that in one soft drink, Safeway Select Diet Orange there was a whopping 79 parts per billion. Benzene is linked to several types of leukemia.
The following five drinks were found to contain high levels of benzene
*Safeway Select Diet Orange
*AquaCal Strawberry Flavored Water Beverage
*Crush Pineapple
*Crystal Light Sunrise Classic Orange
*Giant Light Cranberry Juice Cocktail
The other drinks tested from retail stores in Maryland, Virginia and Michigan had either no benzene or very less amounts of it, the FDA said. The FDA's Center for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition says that benzene is a known carcinogen. It is also responsible for causing cancer in workplaces where benzene emissions are in excess levels.
Dr. Laura Tarantino, a director of the FDA's Office of Food Additive Safety said that most of the 100 drinks were safe, except these five. “Any benzene in soft drinks that can be avoided by the way you formulate or package or distribute should be avoided. That's what we're really asking,” she said.
However the FDA added that the scope of the investigation was very limited, "For example, although one sample from a production lot may contain elevated benzene levels, it does not mean that all the products from that lot will have elevated levels, or that all lots of a given product will contain elevated levels," it said in a statement. Reacting to the findings, the American Beverage Association said that consumers should not have any concern, “Once again the FDA has reviewed the presence of benzene and found no public health concern,” ABA spokesman Kevin Keane said.
