May 9, 2024 – Federal regulators recently set additional limits on employee exposure to a chemical called methylene chloride, and there are calls for further motion to manage Coffee Products which can be decaffeinated using this chemical.
Commonly utilized in bathtub repair and paint stripping, methylene chloride is “known to cause liver cancer, lung cancer, breast cancer, brain cancer, blood cancer, and central nervous system cancer, as well as neurotoxicity, liver damage, and even death,” in line with the EPA. notice the brand new regulations that can largely reduce or ban the usage of methylene chloride for industrial and consumer purposes.
The chemical can also be sometimes used to decaffeinate coffee. According to a 2020 study, methylene chloride was present in 10 out of 24 decaffeinated coffee products tested. report by an activist organization called Clean Label Project.
California lawmakers are considering an invoice Sellers of decaffeinated coffee could possibly be fined as much as $10,000 in the event that they fail to reveal that methylene chloride was utilized in the decaffeination process. An earlier version of the bill proposed a ban on the distribution or sale of coffee decaffeinated with methylene chloride, but an amendment was recently adopted that downgraded the requirement to obviously labeling the products as such.
Activist groups, including the Environmental Protection Fund and the Environmental Working Group are urging federal agencies to stop approving methylene chloride as a food additive. FDA is reviewing comments submitted to the agency in response to a petition submitted by the groups in December.
“It should be concerning to everyone that pregnant women and people with health conditions who want to reduce their caffeine intake are unknowingly sipping trace amounts of methylene chloride in their decaffeinated coffee,” Jaclyn Bowen, executive director of the Clean Label Project, said in an announcement when the petition was filed. “The FDA should ban methylene chloride and companies should use safer available methods of decaffeination.”
The National Coffee Association refutes these claims, stating: “The overwhelming body of independent scientific evidence shows that drinking decaffeinated coffee using the European method, as with all types of coffee, is associated with numerous significant health benefits, including longer lifespan and a lower risk of several types of cancer.”
A summary from the coffee association states that coffee decaffeinated using this method is protected, and points out that the Clean Label Project's tests haven’t been independently verified and the reported levels are inside FDA safety limits.
In a decaffeination process with methylene chloride, caffeine is faraway from the coffee beans by soaking them in hot water, so Description on the InterAmerican Coffee Company website.
“The beans are then removed from the water and the methylene chloride solvent is added to combine with the caffeine. After the methylene chloride/caffeine compound is skimmed from the surface of the mixture, the beans are placed back in the water to reabsorb the liquid. This method of decaffeination (sometimes called the KVW method in Europe) removes between 96 and 97 percent of the caffeine from a batch of coffee,” the outline states. “Some in the coffee industry believe that the methylene chloride process preserves coffee flavor better than other processes.”
FDA regulations allow 10 ppm residual methylene chloride, “but coffee industry practices result in levels 100 times lower,” says the InterAmerican Coffee summary. The National Coffee Association says the FDA safety standard is 10 drops of water per 10 gallons.