If the government study on the top beverage brands in the country is anything to go by then we all have been slowly ingesting a heavy amount of toxins and not the thirst quenching fizz that we think. Pepsico and Coca Cola have been reportedly leaching out different harmful toxins in to our everyday dose of soda – Pepsi, Cocacola, Sprite, 7 Up and Mountain Dew. The toxins that are supposedly present are heavy metals antimony, lead, chromium and cadmium DEHP or Di (2-ethylhexyl) phthalate.
The study was conducted by All India Institute of Hygiene and Public Health (AIIH&PH), a Kolkata-based company, which comes under the Health Ministry. The tests, done by the Drugs Technical Advisory Board (DTAB,) showed that the percentages of toxins were well above the permissible limit in the PET (polyethylene terephthalate) bottles sold. These tests were conducted in the month of March this year and after a meeting on May 13th, the director of the organization Jagdish Prasad acknowledged the submitted reports. Although a committee under Mr. M.K. Bhan, former secretary of Department of Biotechnology, supposedly claimed to have found faults in the reports, these claims were dismissed and final test results were given in on August 2016.
The statement given by Pepsi Co read that, “We have received no intimation nor a copy of the cited test reports and without an understanding of the methodology used, would be unable to comment on the reports. Having said that, we would like to reiterate that all our products conform to Food Safety and Standards Regulations. We would like to emphatically reiterate that our products comply with the permissible limits for heavy metals as laid down by these regulations.”
The Coca Cola representatives were unavailable for comment as was Mr. Prasad. But from the sources it has been gathered that the AIIH&PH had picked up four bottles (600 ml size) each of the cold drink brands as samples at random and handed over to DTAB to perform the tests. These test also showed that the leaching of these chemicals increased significantly with the rise in room temperature.
It is a given fact that almost always 50%, if not more, of these beverages are consumed at room temperature or above. Therefore, the presence of toxins is definitely an issue of concern, notwithstanding the other dietary defects of the sodas. The harmful effects are particularly alarming in children who are more prone to lead and cadmium poisoning. Lead affects the brain and behavioural systems whereas cadmium is a classified human carcinogen.
With the weight of these toxins upto 0.009mg/L, the leaching needs to be taken as a major public health concern and parents would do well to keep their kids away from the fizz.
