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Cancer-Causing Chemical Found in Every Plastic-Bottled Beverage Tested

Beverage industry can’t recycle its way out of harmful plastic and environmental injustice

Laboratory testing of popular beverages, including Pepsi and Coca-Cola brands, found unsafe levels of a highly toxic chemical used to make the plastic bottles for carbonated soft drinks, juices, energy drinks, and bottled water. The chemical leaches out of the plastic during use.

Antimony was measured in all 20 beverages tested, and 40% of the samples exceeded the California public health goal for antimony in drinking water of 1 part per billion. Antimony causes cancer according to federal and international scientists, and is toxic to the liver and heart.

“Chemicals that escape from plastic bottles needlessly threaten the health of consumers, especially children,” said Mike Belliveau, executive director of Defend Our Health, who commissioned the testing. “But safer alternatives are widely available. Beverage companies should demand toxic-free plastic from their suppliers.”

“The science suggests that plastics-related chemicals are creating a disproportionate health burden wherever plastics are produced, used by consumers, or tossed in the trash,” said Dr. Leonardo Trasande, Jim G. Hendrick, MD Professor of Pediatrics and Director of the Center for the Investigation of Environmental Hazards at NYU’s Grossman School of Medicine. “Public health interventions are needed that prevent unnecessary exposure to plastics-related chemicals that may threaten human health.”

The plastic bottle test results are included in a new report entitled “Problem Plastic: How Polyester and PET Plastic Can be Unsafe, Unjust, and Unsustainable Materials.” The report finds:

  • Hundreds of chemicals used to make these plastics pose hidden health hazards;
  • Young children and people of color face the greatest harm from chemicals in plastic;
  • More chemicals leach from plastic bottles with higher temperature, longer storage time, exposure to light, and from contact with more acidic drinks such as juice and soda.

The report also identifies nearly 50 chemical plants, antimony processors, and plastics factories that already produce PET plastic and polyester in North America. The people who live within three miles of most of those industrial facilities are poorer and more often people of color than the average U.S. population, according to Census data. Such income and racial disparities indicate systemic discrimination known as environmental injustice.

Theses impacts would be worsened if two proposed petrochemical plastic plants go online:

  • Corpus Christi Polymers has proposed one of the world’s largest PET plastic plants in Texas, which if approved would increase North American capacity by nearly 25%;
  • Formosa Plastics has proposed another chemical plant in St. James Parish, Louisiana that would produce 1.6 million tons per year of a toxic chemical used to make PET plastic.

Globally, about 83 million metric tons of polyethylene terephthalate (PET), including polyester fiber, were produced in 2019, more than any other single type of plastic. About one-quarter of that was used to make plastic bottles and another 25% for polyester clothing. Combined, only about 11% of PET plastic, including polyester, is ever recycled and usually just once.

Worldwide production of all petrochemical plastics exceeded 475 million metric tons in 2019. That’s more than the combined weight of the nearly 8 billion people on planet Earth. The petrochemical industry wants to double plastics production again by 2040. The United Nations has begun negotiating a global treaty that could curb plastics use and production.