Wednesday, May 25, 2011

Plasticizer in your sports drink

List of drinks with the plasticizer DEHP. The Taipei Times reports:
Four convenience store chains and eight hypermarts agreed to stop selling several brand-name sports and soft drinks containing the banned chemical starting at midnight on Monday after the department made its initial announcement.

Consumers can return products containing DEHP to the stores for refunds, the Consumer Protection Commission (CPC) said.

Wu Cheng-hsueh (吳政學), a section chief at the commission, added that the CPC had asked local consumer protection officials to work with health officials and prosecutors to continue to trace the affected products.

Prosecutors said clouding agent formulated with palm oil may be used as a food additive. However, as the cost of palm oil is high, Lai is alleged to have been adding industrial plasticizer to his clouding agent, which he supplied to at least 45 soft drink and dairy manufacturers around Taiwan.

Lai, 57, the owner of the largest clouding agent supplier in the nation, has a high-capacity manufacturing plant in Dongguan, Guangdong Province, China, and supplies Chinese and Vietnamese manufacturers as well as local companies.
Wouldn't the list of poisons not found in food products coming out of China be shorter?

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4 comments:

OzSoapbox said...

Anyone got an English translation of those Chinese names?

I don't drink the tapwater here so it'd be interesting to see if I've been happily chugging on plastic for... well we don't really know how many months (years?) this has been going on for now do we.

MJ Klein said...

one of the side effects is reduced fertility. could this possibly be the cause of Taiwan's very low fertility rate?

Okami said...

Looking into my crystal ball, it appears that this has probably been going on for awhile and the DOH was tipped off by a competitor. A competitor would of been able to know which companies he was supplying, how much the raw product should cost and would of known what to look for.

This seems awfully well-managed for any other explanation. I would look for a company that uses the palm oil based clouding agent, but isn't on that list, but was a previous client. My money is on Uni-president or Family Mart's parent company.

Anonymous said...

Many TV stations and newspapers say that the drinks and powders were manufactured in Taiwan.