Children are consuming a ‘potentially lethal’ chemical discovered at high concentrations in popular fruit juices.<\/p>\n
The chemical antimony is toxic and consumption can lead to illness similar to arsenic poisoning.<\/p>\n
In small does, antimony consumption can cause headaches, dizzy spells and depression, but in high doses, it can cause violent vomiting and lead to death.<\/p>\n
The long term effects of taking in antimony are unknown, but the chemical is a suspected carcinogen.<\/p>\n
It is used in the production of polyethylene terephthalate (PET) used to contain food and drink.<\/p>\n
The citric acid from the juices are likely to be causing the leaching of the chemical from the containers.<\/p>\n
The concentration of the chemical found is up to 17 times higher than discovered in previous studies.<\/p>\n
The 16 brands, all produced in the UK had concentrations higher than the EU limit for drinking water.<\/p>\n
The research published by the Royal Society of Chemistry, highlighted in the Journal of Environmental Monitoring, has caused scientists to call for deeper research to be conducted as it can not be ruled out that the chemical was not present in the juice prior to being packaged.<\/p>\n
Lead researched, Claus Hansen said: “The antimony concentrations in the products tested exceed the antimony limit in EU drinking water but no antimony limits exist for foodstuffs so no legislation has been broken. However, we cannot be sure that the antimony levels found are harmless. The human exposure to antimony is increasing and since antimony has no known biological function, there is concern about its long term effects.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Children are consuming a ‘potentially lethal’ chemical discovered at high concentrations in popular fruit juices. The chemical antimony is toxic<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":16,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"colormag_page_container_layout":"default_layout","colormag_page_sidebar_layout":"default_layout","footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7186","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-bristol-news"],"yoast_head":"\n