Soft drink, hard to swallow

If it weren't so dangerous, it almost would be fun to watch government agencies try to spin their own findings in favor of big business. Here's an example.

Cancer-causing benzene has been found in soft drinks at levels above the limit considered safe for drinking water, the Food and Drug Administration acknowledged Wednesday.

Even so, the FDA still believes there are no safety concerns about benzene in soft drinks, or sodas, said Laura Tarantino, the agency's director of food additive safety.

"We haven't changed our view that right now, there is not a safety concern, not a public health concern," she said. "But what we need to do is understand how benzene forms and to ensure the industry is doing everything to avoid those circumstances."

The admission contradicted statements last week, when officials said FDA found insignificant levels of benzene.

In fact, a different study found benzene at four times the tap water limit, on average, in 19 of 24 samples of diet soda.

Tarantino said chemists may have overestimated the amount of benzene and that levels in diet soda were still relatively low compared with other sources of benzene exposure.

Like drinking gasoline, for instance.

Let me see if I have this straight: Testing reveals benzene levels in soft drink samples at four times the level considered safe for drinking water (or about 20 ppb). But the FDA says it's nothing to worry about.

So, if that level of benzene were found in water, it would be considered unsafe. But in soft drinks, no problem.

What is driving the FDA toward that conclusion? It doesn't appear to have been burdened by either logic or common sense, so something else must be at work.

You don't suppose this could have anything to do with that conclusion, do you? It may seem cynical, but "follow the money" has explained a lot of things that otherwise defy explanation.

Click here to read the FDA's response to concerns raised by Richard Wiles of the Environmental Working Group. My favorite part: "FDA is continuing to sample beverages to gain more representative data on the current situation. We intend to release our results when we have a more complete understanding of the current marketplace."