Coke, Pepsi to drop level of 'cancer' chemical

By Kerry Sheridan | AFP

Coca-Cola and Pepsi said Friday they have lowered levels of a chemical in caramel coloring to comply with a California law, but insisted the drinks pose no health risks and recipes will not change.

The move allows the companies to avoid having to label products with a cancer warning due to what the health-conscious west coast state has ruled are high levels of 4-methylimidazole, shown to cause cancer in lab rodents.

Both drinkmakers said their popular and highly secretive soda recipes will not be altered but that caramel suppliers have been asked to reduce 4-MEI levels in California, a change that will eventually spread across the United States.

"We are NOT changing our recipe; or our formula," Coca-Cola Company spokesman Ben Sheidler told AFP in an email.

"What we did do is direct our caramel suppliers to make a manufacturing process modification in order to reduce the level of 4-MEI in our caramel so as to meet the requirement set by the state of California's Proposition 65."

For its part, PepsiCo said its beverages "are and always will be safe for consumption."

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Cancer Risk Found in Coke, Pepsi: Group

By Stephanie Armour

U.S. regulators, reviewing an advocacy group’s complaint that a chemical used in colas causes tumors in animals, said there’s no immediate risk to consumers from the substance.

A person would have to drink more than a thousand cans of soda in a day to match the doses administered in studies that showed links to cancer in rodents, Douglas Karas, a U.S. Food and Drug Administration spokesman, said in a statement.

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Pepsi and Coca-Cola delivery trucks in New York. Photographer: Daniel Acker/Bloomberg

The Center for Science in the Public Interest, a consumer- health group in Washington, said in a statement today that high levels of the chemical 4-methylimidazole were found in drinks made by Coca-Cola Co. (KO) and PepsiCo. Inc. (PEP) The chemical is part of coloring used in colas and the subject of astudy the group released today. An industry group disputed the findings.

“This is nothing more than scare tactics,” the American Beverage Association said in a statement today, calling the claims “outrageous.”

The FDA has no reason to believe consumers are in danger, the FDA’s Karas wrote in an e-mail. The agency is reviewing the group’s petition, he said.

The consumer group said it commissioned laboratory studies of products including Coca-Cola, Pepsi-Cola, Diet Coke, Diet Pepsi, Snapple Group Inc.’s Dr Pepper and Diet Dr Pepper, and Whole Foods 365 Cola from Washington-area stores.

“Coke and Pepsi, with the acquiescence of the FDA, are needlessly exposing millions of Americans to a chemical that causes cancer,” said Michael F. Jacobson, the Washington-based group’s executive director, in a statement. “The FDA needs to protect consumers from this risk.”

California Standards

Pepsi’s products, Diet Coke and regular Coca-Cola had levels that were high enough to require a warning notice in the state of California, according to the center’s release.

The chemical was included on California’s list of carcinogens even though there are no studies showing it causes cancer in humans, the industry group said.

Diana Garza Ciarlante, a spokeswoman at Atlanta-based Coca- Cola, said the chemical, also known as 4-MEI, poses no health or safety risks.

“Unlike CSPI, The Coca Cola company deals in hard facts,” she said in an e-mail. “ The body of science about 4-MEI in foods or beverages does not support the erroneous allegations that CSPI would like the public to believe.”

No regulator agency concerned with protecting the public health has stated the chemical is a human carcinogen, she said.

Gillian Galasso, a spokeswoman at PepsiCo in Purchase, New York, didn’t respond immediately to a phone message seeking comment.

Libba Letton, a spokeswoman at Austin, Texas-based Whole Foods Market Inc., didn’t immediately return a call and e-mail seeking comment, and a message left on the media relations line at Dr Pepper Snapple Group in Plano, Texas, wasn’t immediately returned.

To contact the reporters on this story: Stephanie Armour in Washington atsarmour@bloomberg.net and Duane Stanford in Atlanta at dstanford@bloomberg.net

To contact the editor responsible for this story: Adriel Bettelheim at abettelheim@bloomberg.net

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-03-05/cancer-causing-chemical-found-in-coca-cola-pepsi-consumer-group-says.html