Benzoic acid and consumer safety

Consumer safety is a serious issue globally. As such, world bodies as well as individual countries set up agencies to ensure not only the certification of ingredients but also the regulation of safe limits in the use of those ingredients in the production of food items for humans or livestock. For instance, the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) and the World Health Organisation (WHO) established the Codex Alimentarius Commission (Codex) to set internationally recognised standards, codes of practice, and guidelines relating to foods, food production, and food safety.

In Nigeria, the National Agency for Food and Drug Administration and Control (NAFDAC), an equivalent of the United States Food and Drug Administration (FDA), has a mission “to safeguard the public health by ensuring that only the right quality food, drugs and other regulated products are manufactured, exported, imported, advertised, sold and used”.

Similarly, the Standards Organisation of Nigeria’s mandate, as specified by its enabling Act, includes “designation, establishment, approval and declaration of standards in respect of metrology, materials, commodities, structures and processes, certification of products in commerce and industry throughout Nigeria, quality control of products, weights and measures, investigation of quality of products, etc, enforcement of standards, quality management”, among others. And there is the Consumer Protection Council.

At the core of these agencies’ mandate is the safety of the consumer. It is not surprising, therefore, that when an issue arises that borders on consumer safety, everyone is on alert. At such times, only the right information can save the day.

Take the recent controversy over the benzoic acid content of two particular soft drinks brands produced in Nigeria. While we cannot comment on the matter in detail because the case is in court, we consider as unfortunate the speculation that both products are harmful to consumers because they exceeded the United Kingdom’s benzoic acid limit. Fortunately, the timely intervention of the Federal Ministry of Health, which on March 17, 2017 issued a statement clarifying the issues and declaring the products in question as safe for consumption, has doused the needless tension.

Our independent analysis of research findings by various experts, which are ubiquitous on the cyberspace, supports the ministry’s stand. According to findings, benzoic acid, a colourless crystalline solid and the simplest aromatic carboxylic acid, is indeed safe for human consumption and is widely used globally as a food additive to preserve different kinds of foods and other products, such as pharmaceuticals and cosmetics. Manufacturers in addition use benzoic acid in the production of artificial flavours, fragrances and as a pH adjuster.

Perhaps, more important is the fact that benzoic acid, which inhibits the growth of mold, yeast and bacteria, is approved by International Food Safety regulators as well as national regulators as a preservative in many food and beverage products around the world. It is considered one of the safest preservatives because it is rapidly absorbed from the gastrointestinal tract of mammals and conjugated with glycine in the liver. The resulting hippuric acid is excreted in the urine rapidly (75-100 percent of the dose is excreted within six hours; the remaining dose is excreted within two to three days).

This is why benzoic acid is found in various approved levels in food and beverage products such as fruit juices, soft drinks, pickles, barbecue sauces, salad dressings, jams, jellies, marmalades, chocolate products, custard (egg-based desserts), margarine and similar products, cereal and starch-based desserts, wines, chewing gum, water-based flavoured drinks, including “sport”, “energy” or “electrolyte” drinks and particulated drinks with ascorbic acid, flavoured yogurt and malt drinks. The Codex-recommended safe limit for each of these food types varies significantly. For instance, while chocolate products have a standard of 1500mg/kg, the standard for wines is 1000mg/kg, and 600mg/kg for sports/energy drinks and malt drinks. Nigeria adopted these standards with the exception of malt drinks where the local standard was set at 350mg/kg. It is instructive that all of these products have much higher benzoic acid standards than soft drinks.

Just as Codex sets the global standards, national regulators are also at liberty to set appropriate permissible limits for their respective countries, guided by the Codex standard and their own environmental and other factors. For example, whereas Codex set the permissible limit of benzoic acid in carbonated soft drinks at 600mg/kg until recently reviewed to 250mg/kg in 2016 (CODEX STAN 192–1995 revised 2015 and 2016) and ratified in March 2017, SON, in consultation with technical experts and relevant stakeholders, set the Nigeria country standard at 250mg/kg for soft drinks that contain ascorbic acid (Vitamin C), such as Fanta, and 300mg/kg for soft drinks that contain no ascorbic acid, such as Sprite – well within the Codex standard. Going by that, could soft drinks that contain 188.64mg/kg, 201.06mg/kg and 161.5mg/kg, respectively, be considered to have violated any standards?

In other climes, the European Union (including the UK) set the limit of benzoic acid in carbonated soft drinks at 150mg/kg, South Africa 400mg/kg, Argentina 500mg/kg, Australia 400mg/kg, Brazil 500mg/kg, Canada 1000mg/kg, China 200mg/kg, Japan 600mg/kg, Mexico 600mg/kg, and United States of America 1000mg/kg.

Given that each country has its standards, it goes without saying that products moving from one country to another must necessarily meet the destination country’s standards. That a product meant for one country was turned back from another country does not make it harmful or unsafe for human consumption; it may simply mean it does not meet regulatory requirements of the destination country.

But are there conditions under which benzoic acid can react negatively? The answer is yes. Our finding shows that when benzoic acid reacts with Vitamin C (ascorbic acid) in drinks under certain conditions, such as extremely hot weather conditions (above 60 degrees Celsius), benzene, a carcinogen, may be produced. But even that is a far-fetched probability and only one of several risk factors that must occur in combination. At its peak, the temperature in Maiduguri, easily the country’s hottest city, is 45 degrees Celsius. The possibility of someone boiling a bottle or can of Fanta to that degree before consumption is equally far-fetched.