Four soft drinks have been pulled from shop shelves in the UK due to contamination with a potentially cancer-causing chemical, the Food Standards Agency (FSA) said today.

The Government’s food watchdog found levels of benzene at nearly treble the guideline limits in a Co-op own-brand drink.

Another three types of soft drink also contained levels of the chemical which exceeded the World Health Organisation’s (WHO) guidelines, the FSA said. Those products were:

• a litre bottle of Co-op’s low calorie bitter lemon with benzene at 28ppb, plus the same drink with a different best-before date which contained benzene at 11ppb;
• a 330ml Popstar-branded still sugar free lemon and lime drink at 17ppb.
• Morrisons own-brand two litre no added sugar pineapple and grapefruit crush at 11ppb.
• Hyberry one litre high juice, no added sugar, blackcurrant squash at 12ppb.

But a leading FSA expert said that consumers would have to drink many litres of the products to ingest more benzene than they would by breathing a city street.

The contamination came to light during a survey of 150 soft drinks on sale in the UK. That survey was sparked by the discovery of the cancer-causing benzene in soft drinks on sale in the US.

Four of the 150 drinks tested in the UK exceeded the WHO’s guideline benzene limits of up to 10 parts per billion (ppb).

The Co-op has removed its affected batches of low calorie bitter lemon from sale. The FSA has asked for the affected batches of the other three products to be recalled.

Another 38 of the 150 samples tested contained benzene between one and 10ppb which is within the WHO’s guideline levels. The other 107 samples contained no benzene at all.

Dr Andrew Wadge, the FSA director of food safety, said that the vast majority of soft drinks tested were not a cause for concern. He said: "However we are concerned about the levels in four drinks and have asked their manufacturers to remove the affected batches from sale

"While it is important that industry take action, people should not be alarmed if they have drunk these products. The levels of benzene reported in this survey will only make a negligible impact on people’s overall exposure to benzene and so any additional risk to health is therefore likely to be minimal."

Benzene is a chemical that can cause cancer in humans, according to the FSA’s

website. Its presence in some soft drinks is due to the interaction between the preservative sodium benzoate and ascorbic acid (vitamin C). Sodium benzoate is added to drinks to prevent mould growth.

Dr Wadge said that the FSA wanted all soft drinks to be produced without any detectable traces of benzene.

The FSA’s survey drew on WHO guidelines which relate to recommended maximum levels of benzene for drinking water. No legal limits exist for benzene levels in soft drinks.

Drinking more than 20 litres of a liquid containing benzene at 10ppb would still only equal the amount of benzene breathed in from city air during one day, the FSA said. Its soft drinks survey included samples of squashes, fizzy drinks and ready-to-drink still drinks.

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