The following news snippet sends shivers down my spine as I read the bitter truth. Its high time that celebrities stop advertising for such hazardous chemicals and people realise the truth and shift over to traditional fruit juices and other hramless drinks!!!
August 02, 2006 20:13 IST
The Centre for Science and Environment on Wednesday came out with a fresh study claiming the presence of 'pesticide cocktail' in 11 brands of soft drink giants Coca Cola and PepsiCo, three years after the same brands were found to have contained pesticides.
The new findings, publicised after testing 57 samples of 11 soft drink brands of Coca Cola and PepsiCo collected from 25 manufacturing units across 12 states, claims that all the bottles examined were a "cocktail of 3-5 different pesticides" which was 24 times above the standards finalised by Bureau of Indian Standards.
"We have found pesticide residue in all soft drinks tested. Three years ago, when the tests were conducted we could spot only four pesticides. This time it has increased to five in some cases," Sunita Narain, director, CSE said.
The study - 'Soft Drinks - Hard Truth II' - claims that the average amount of pesticide residues found in all the samples was 11.85 parts per billion, which is 24 times higher than the BIS standards for pesticides in soft drinks (0.5 ppb).
It also found the presence of Lindane (a carcinogen), Chlorphyrifis (a neurotoxin), Heptachlor, Mealthion and HCH. Heptachlor, banned in India, was found in 71 per cent of the samples, at four times higher than BIS standards.
On an average, the levels of deadly Lindane were over 54 times above the approved standards while one Coca Cola sample from Kolkata had this pesticide 140 times. Chlorpyrifos levels were on an average 47 times higher and a Coca Cola sample from Thane tested for this particular pesticide at a level that is 200 times than the approved levels.
The full article is available at: http://in.rediff.com/money/2006/aug/02cola.htm
No comments:
Post a Comment