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.
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.
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.
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.
