Steve,
"Erin"
obviously know nothing about chemistry. There may indeed be problems with
regards to BVO's, but you can't tell that by looking at the properties of
bromine, for crying out loud! If that were the case, we would have to give
up sodium chloride (made of a metal that can react explosively with water and an
element that is one of the most corrosive gases known to man). Just see
how long anyone would last without their 500 mg of sodium every
day.
Bev
Christian
Hi
Mike!
Found the information below about Brominated Vegetable Oil, it's
keep the other flavor oils from separating in your Dew...
-Steve
Gregory-
Brominated Vegetable
Oil For those who care about their body...
A little health information from ForEverWorld Books. Today is a sad day
in Erin's gaming life, for I have come to realize that Mt. Dew is too
questionable for my health. I ran out to purchase the Code Red Mountain Dew,
drank it, loved it and then read the label. At the bottom were the ingredients
Brominated Vegetable Oil. Being curious, I checked it out on the web. Starting
with Atomic/GuruNet, I found that Brominated
means 'to combine a substance with bromine or a bromine compound'. Then I
looked up Bromine.
It's defined as:
A heavy, volatile, corrosive, reddish-brown, nonmetallic
liquid element, having a
highly irritating vapor. It is used in producing gasoline
antiknock mixtures, fumigants,
dyes, and photographic
chemicals. Atomic weight 79.904; atomic number 35;
melting point 7.2°C;
boiling point 58.78°C; valence 1, 3, 5, 7.
YUCK!! I thought that
poisons at the gaming table were supposed to be a fictional thing!So I checked
out the FDA
pages, which state that BVO has been allowed in our foods since 1977, but
remains in the top 2000 toxicity additives and must be re-examined every 6
months. The additive cannot exceed 15 parts per million (just one ounce must
be diluted into 520 gallons of Mountain Dew to stay under the toxicity level -
or 5546 (12) oz cans).
It is also illegal to put BVO in anything
without declaring it first. Coca-Cola found this out with a batch of Minute
Maid Grape that had to be recalled for not
declaring BVO on it's label.
Like PCBs, BVO leaves traces in the fat
cells of your body. Nothing like being dyed from the inside out with your
favorite citric soda, eh? Yes, unfortunately BVO is in many citric-based soft
drinks besides Mt. Dew - it's purpose is to make the flavoring oils the same
density as water. This keeps the flavor oil from separating in your
soda.
But don't take my word for it. Check out the research for
yourself on Google or
the FDA homepage.
This posting has no relevance to circuit boards or assemblies,
but given the amount of discussion on this forum on the drive to eliminate
brominated flame retardants in PWB materials and the fondness of some
regulars for the Dew, I think it's relevant.
The other day, I noticed one of my co-workers drinking a
liquid that was unnaturally bright red. I queried him on exactly what
this liquid was. He replied Mountain Dew Code Red. This led to a
discussion of what exactly was Code Red. A scan of the ingredients
revealed the expected red dye but surprisingly, it also contained brominated
vegetable oil. I immediately asked why the makers of this product felt
it necessary to add an apparent flame retardant to their product. My
co-worker (incidentally a chemist who really should no better but claims
that he somehow manages to compartmentalize all this stuff) had no
idea.
I just thought this whole thing is very ironic.
Most of us work in an industry that is spending millions of dollars trying
to remove bromine from one of the constituents while at the same time you
have a "food" product to which intentionally is added a brominated
hydrocarbon. Does anybody know what purpose the brominated vegetable oil
serves? It also turns out the some component is in regular Dew as well as
diet red dew but not diet regular Dew.
Now back to our regularly scheduled
programming....
Mike McMaster
RF Product Engineer
Merix Corporation
503-992-4263
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