RALEIGH, N.C. (AP) A tearful apology from the prosecutor who handled the Duke lacrosse rape case. Mike Nifong (NY'-fawng) also announced that he would step down from his post as Durham County, North Carolina's district attorney. Nifong is facing an ethics trial for withholding critical D-N-A evidence in the case. The three athletes who were accused have since been exonerated.
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First Published: 12:23 IST(28/5/2007)
Last Updated: 12:52 IST(28/5/2007)
Latest research by a British scientist shows that a preservative used in cold drinks could switch off vital parts of deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA), causing serious damage to cells particularly in children.
Sodium benzoate or E211 has been used as a preservative for decades by the 74 billion pound global carbonated drinks industry. It is used to kill yeast, bacteria, and fungi in soft drinks, jam, fruit juice and salad dressing. When mixed with vitamin C it forms benzene, a carcinogenic substance. The preservative is also found naturally in cranberries, prunes, greengages, cinnamon, ripe cloves and apples.
Peter Piper, a molecular biology expert at Sheffield University studied the preservative and found it could damage an important part of DNA called mitochondria.
"These chemicals have the ability to cause severe damage to DNA in the mitochondria to the point that they totally inactivate it, they knock it out altogether," said Piper.
"The mitochondria consumes the oxygen to give you energy and if you damage it then the cell starts to malfunction very seriously," he said. "And there is a whole array of diseases now being tied to damage to this part of DNA. Parkinson's and quite a lot of neuro-degenerative diseases, but above all the whole process of ageing can be caused by the damage," added Piper.
However, makers of drinks like Coca-Cola, Fanta and Diet Pepsi insisted that experts had rigorously assessed the additive before it had been approved for use. Coca-Cola said all their ingredients have been approved as safe by the food regulatory authorities in Britain and the European Union (EU), from where they take their guidance.
A spokesman for Britvic, which makes Diet Pepsi said, "We will only use ingredients that are thoroughly tested and approved for use by the Food Standards Agency (FSA) in Britain and approved by the EU." Piper claimed that tests on sodium benzoate carried out by the European Union and the US Food and Drug Administration were too old to be reliable, the online edition of the Daily Mail reported on Sunday.
"By the criteria of modern safety testing, the safety tests were inadequate," he said.
"Like all things, safety testing moves forward and you can conduct a much more rigorous safety test than you could 50 years ago. My concern is for children who are drinking large amounts," said Piper. Norman Baker, the chairman of the British parliament's all-party environment group, endorsed Piper's call for further tests.
"Professor Piper has studied this for some years so we should be taking his concerns seriously. I will be writing to the FSA to ask them to carry out further investigation and I would advise parents to make sure there is no over-exposure to these drinks for their children," said Baker.
In India, the New Delhi based Centre for Science and Environment (CSE) had earlier tested Pepsi and Coca-Cola products and had announced that it found four toxic residues after testing 12 of their major brands.
"Some of these residues were carcinogenic," claimed CSE director Sunita Narain. As a result OF
Study finds traces of Malathion in samples of softdrinks
A new study has claimed that traces of Malathion, a pesticide, which can have harmful effects on the human brain, were found in certain samples of soft drinks.
The report by Centre for Science and Environment (CSE) on pesticide content in soft drinks said considerable traces of Malathion were found in at least 50 per cent of the samples it collected from the National Capital Region for the study.
"Malathion is a widely used pesticide in urban areas for controlling mosquito's and pests and we have found traces of the pesticide in at least 50 per cent of the samples collected in Delhi and its neighbouring areas," CSE Associate Director Chandra Bhushan said.
The study, Soft Drinks - Hard Truth II, which was released on August 2, also claimed that soft drink samples collected from the NCR contained a "pesticide cocktail" of Lindane, Heptachlor, Chlorpyrosis and Malathion and it was more than 20 times the approved BIS standards.
According to CSE's 2003 study, the average level of pesticide residues in Delhi samples were 34 times above the same BIS standards.
Nine samples of Coca Cola, Fanta, Limca and Thums Up were collected from various parts of the capital during December 2005 and April 2006.
They were produced in Gurgaon's Enrich Agro Food Products and Ghaziabad's Hindustan Coca Cola Beverages and were tested as part of CSE's all-India study, Bhushan said.
Malathion, a chemical inhibitor, is known for hindering transmission of signals to human brain
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Soft drink preservatives could damage children's DNA
