Perrier got a huge amount of negative press when it was discovered that benzene was found in their bottles and did a massive recall back in 1990.
That was when the news actually reported on important things in a big way.
This will mostly get ignored.
The loss of journalistic integrity is the most damaging result of the enshittification of the internet. I’ve thought for years about how to fix this, but I can’t think of any way. Information is a commodity with no intrinsic value. So “news” whores itself out to donors with an agenda or advertisers.
This was supposed to be better than the gatekeeping of the 70’s and 80’s where you had a few major papers and 3 TV stations, and they could bury stories that went against their self-interest or agenda. But somehow we’ve made it worse.
Two things I would never go to school for these days: teaching and journalism. And that’s fucking tragic because those are maybe the two most important jobs there are.
This is why we have public funding and government and laws.
Unless you live in a red town that votes to blow all its budgets on police and subsidies to empty storefronts.
They also had a magnesium filter fail shortly after. They survived the bad press by buying up US water brands before the boycotts could take them down. They picked up Poland Spring, Great Bear, Deer Park, and San Pellegrino. Their only real competition was Evian until Dannon got big into the water game.
Source: briefly worked for PGA (Perrier Group of America) in the late 90s
I don’t know about you, but I consume water more often than cold medicine.
I have absolutely no idea what your point is. I drink more water than Pepto Bismol, but if there was mercury in it, I would sure as hell want them to stop selling the Pepto Bismol with mercury.
The dose makes the poison. What was the benzene level in Perrier compared to these medicines, and then how much was a person likely to consume in a year? Without a discussion of dose, it’s pretty meaningless.
California has Prop 65, which is rendered virtually useless because everything is carcinogenic to some degree.
First of all, plenty of people take Mucinex every day, especially in allergy season.
Do you know what the safe daily dosage of benzine is? I bet it’s not especially high when we’re talking about something cumulative. And why should people take that risk when the article says this is just about saving money and there are safer alternatives?
This is some weird defense of big pharma.
This article is talking about benzene, not benzine FYI.
The allowable limit in drinking water by the EPA is 5 ppb. Inhalation exposure limit by OSHA is 1 a 5 ppm per day (inhalation is not an apples to apples comparison to consumption though). I’m not a toxicologist so I don’t know what exposure amount is “safe”, but dosage does matter.
This article mentions benzene coming from the carbomer in these formulas. The benzene is a residual impurity in the carbomer making process, and there are carbomer on the marketplace that don’t use benzene in their manufacturing process, but they are more expensive. I’m not sure the source of carbomer for these products, but I’ve seen reported on carbomer I’ve looked at to have up to 1 ppm of benzene impurity. Products like this might use carbomer up to 0.5 to 1%. So you’d expect maximum levels of benzene to be in the product (at the aforementioned levels) to be 10 ppb. So possibly at double the amount allowable in drinking water by EPA. People drink a lot more water than cough syrup (I hope) so it might not be that concerning.
The article frustratingly does not give amounts of benzene found in these products so it could be sensationalist—I just don’t know. So is benzene bad—yes. Does the cough syrup have concerning levels of benzene? Maybe, but just saying benzene might be present isn’t enough information in my opinion.
I think what he’s getting at is, it has benzene, it’s got what plants crave.
This article should say that benzene is an ingredient in cold relief medicine. The headline as is suggests is could be a just an agent in the process. That’s a big difference.
Benzene is used to make a large portion of all chemicals in existence, as it is a basic building block of organic chemistry. That doesn’t mean it’s in the final product.
This is an asinine headline capitalizing on scientific illiteracy for clickbait. No different than complaining about dihydrogen monoxide in food.
reading the article, it looks like part of the benzene somehow made it to the final product, and that’s why it needs to be replaced
Dangerous chemical in something to be consumed by people? Probably just America again, but let’s check
US regulators have allowed drugmakers to use benzene for decades, even though international authorities have said they shouldn’t. In recent years, testing has found dangerously high levels of the chemical in some products in the US, raising concerns. Last year, the US Food and Drug Administration said the ingredient would be phased out of pharmaceutical use in 2025, a deadline that has been extended to 2026 following industry complaints.
Yep
Watch that 2026 deadline slip again as some money changes hands
Can people post stuff without the pay wall please?
It would be nice to know what brand it is. 🙄
Generic ones sold as store brands by CVS, Walmart, Target and Walgreens
Generic Mucinex
Including Walgreens’ version of Anbesol, an oral pain reliever; Walmart’s Equate brand face moisturizer with sunscreen; and Rite Aid’s version of Bengay muscle rub.
Those were the mentioned ones
Firefox’s reader mode can usually grab the article before the paywall loads if you change it to reader mode and then hit refresh.
I would post the full text but it’s unfortunately against Rule 10.
It’s not available in reader mode. I’ve tried lol
I used a gift link so that people don’t hit the paywall
Thanks
Also and perhaps more important, the benzene is used to make it slow-release. So I think if you just keep a bottle of guaifenesin around and have another dose every 4 hours you should be better off. But I’m not a pharmacist so ask yours first.
the bot link has cvs, walmart, Walgreens in the url… that’s my guess, still not clicking it
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