Oh no! We're all going to die.... again.

01 April 2006   1:29 AM

Yes, in yet another BBC related post, I've this time discovered that there's a Cancer Chemical in soft drinks. Yes, congratulations, you too could be drinking Benzene.

But hang on a minute. Cancer chemical in soft drinks. So you're thinking have we all been drinking it, then? Probably not. Of the one hundred and fifty drinks tested, one hundred and seven had no benzene detectable. Of the remaining forty three, thirty eight had benzene levels lower than the World Health Organisation's recommended maximum. Leaving only four brands (one with two batches) with levels over ten parts per billion.

If you want to find out exactly which brands, read the article, yeah? You only get my rants over here... now where was I?

Oh yes. Well, before you all rush out to check which brands they are so you can throw them all out (and in some cases, completely unaffected brands - but that's another story), you might want to bear in mind that a more effective way to reduce your benzene intake would be to bugger off into the middle of the countryside somewhere - ideally at least 100 miles from the nearest road, and give up the use of anything that uses a petrol engine.

The Food Standards Agency estimate that people who live in a city breathe in approximately the equivalent of twenty litres of a ten part-per-billion benzene drink per day (that's about 4 ½ gallons for those of you still on imperial measurements. And don't get me started on them). The most benzene found was 28 parts per billion. So unless you're drinking more than seven litres of a specific batch of low calorie bitter lemon per day, you're still taking in more benzene just from being in the city.

Surely, you think, it's a bit unfair on the drinks industry that they have to recall their product when there's all those benzene-producing things on the road...but of course it's not as convenient to give up your car is it? And I suspect the automotive industry is worth more money than the low-calorie bitter lemon drink industry. Not that that would have anything to do with it, and I'd be a fool and a communist to believe otherwise. Or something.