Chemical Forums
Specialty Chemistry Forums => Citizen Chemist => Topic started by: Jiro on April 23, 2006, 10:22:21 PM
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hmm... so if i pour vinegar into coke which contains sodium benzoate... then add vitamin c for the catalyst would i get benzene? trace amounts? hmm so i guess if its true then the moral of the experiment would be don't eat salt and vinegar chips and down it with coca-cola, then eat an orange? hahaha... what are some other combination of foods that can turn into a plate of nasty carcinogens? hmm i wonder if this is an illegal topic. My intention was to let people know to be more safe.
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I think the acid in your stomach will degrade most of those structures before its ever a health problem. Is benzene a carcinogen?
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http://www.physchem.ox.ac.uk/MSDS/BE/benzene.html
yah. it appears so according to the msds... all sp2 hybridized too so that should have been a hint.
yah acid in the stomach probably will degrade it, like how they talk about splenda... aromatic compounds though, arnt they suppost to be extremely stable in their sp2 hybridization?
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Well, sp2 carbons are harder to hmolytically cleave than sp3 bonded carbons.
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All the health food fans I know have been talking about colas containing benzene.
http://www.foodproductiondaily.com/news/ng.asp?n=66512-coca-cola-soft-drinks-benzene
By the way this is the list of ingredients in Diet Pepsi
Contains: Carbonated water, caramel color, aspartame, phosphoric acid, potassium benzoate (preserves freshness), caffeine, citric acid and natural flavors.
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I do not believe in a significant decarboxylation of benzoic acid from potassium benzoate. Much more dangerous is its eventual metabolism in a liver. However, lack of conservant is far more dangerous.
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what are some other combination of foods that can turn into a plate of nasty carcinogens?
I know that olive oil will become carcinogenic when cooked.
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P-man -
I know that olive oil will become carcinogenic when cooked.
There have been many statements about the positive health effects of olive oil in the diet. It is interesting that you bring up a claim of potential carcinogenic effects. If you read about olive oil you will see that the carcinogenic issue is unclear. For instance, at what temperature do you have to attain to get this compounds reputed to be carcinogenic? Do the antioxidants in the olive oil cancel out the effect of other compounds? The carcinogenic effects of compounds in a lot of other food products seem clearer than the claims against olive oil.
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That whole story about benzene from soft drinks is sheer nonsense.
Many soft drinks and also other processed drinks and foods contain benzoic acid (or salts derived from this). Benzoic acid is C6H5COOH. This compound is fairly innocuous. In order to make benzene out of this, the -COOH group should be replaced by a single H-atom. This, however, is remarkably difficult and requires quite extreme conditions, which certainly are not present in the human body.
Drinking a lot of coca cola is not healthy at all, but there are other ingredients then which are more harmful (most notably the loads of sugar in the product and its fattening effect on the human body).
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Well, I heard that I changes the molecular structure and makes it carcinogenic.
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That whole story about benzene from soft drinks is sheer nonsense.
At least partially not - look for discussion in sci.chem, about two weeks ago. There is a grain of truth in the whole story.
But I agree with you that there are much more important health risks connected with soft drinks than occasional traces of benzene.
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Benzene Production from Decarboxylation of Benzoic Acid in the Presence of Ascorbic Acid and a Transition-Metal Catalyst
J. Agric. Food Chem., VOl. 41, No. 5, 1993
http://pubs.acs.org/cen/news/84/i17/8417notw2.html
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I personally would be more worried with the phosphoric acid eating away at my teeth. I think coca cola has a pH around 3 or 4. I tested it once a long time ago and remember it being around there.
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I think the acid in your stomach will degrade most of those structures before its ever a health problem. Is benzene a carcinogen?
I can remember one text book describe it as the mother of all carcinogens, i can't remember which but if you do a search for "mother of all carcinogens" virtually all results using that quote are with regards to benzene.
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Yeah benzene is quite nasty. I think the body has trouble hydrolising it therefore has trouble excreting it. Alternate solvents such as toluene are supposed to be better as the body has an easier time hydrolising and excreting it.
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Benzene is a carcinogen, while toluene is not. This is for sterical reasons. The benzene molecule is flat and this shape allows it to slip into the crevices of DNA molecules/structures, where it affects the reproduction. Toluene is a flat molecule with a thick blob attached to it (the -CH3 has a tetraedal shape) and this makes it next to impossible for the molecule to go to those places, where benzene molecules can go. This makes toluene (and also xylenes) much less harmfull. The same is true for many other substituted benzene derivatives, such as benzoic acid, which as a -COOH, substituted for one of the H's.
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Yeah benzene is quite nasty. I think the body has trouble hydrolising it therefore has trouble excreting it. Alternate solvents such as toluene are supposed to be better as the body has an easier time hydrolising and excreting it.
This is not a problem of hydrolysis, but an oxidation
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This is not a problem of hydrolysis, but an oxidation
oops :) thanks :P
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I think the acid in your stomach will degrade most of those structures before its ever a health problem. Is benzene a carcinogen?
I can remember one text book describe it as the mother of all carcinogens, i can't remember which but if you do a search for "mother of all carcinogens" virtually all results using that quote are with regards to benzene.
I have only heard that statement in regards to benzo-alpha-pyrene which is just a conglomeration of three benzene rings into one master structure (I believe). VERY nasty stuff and only tiny quantities of it can cause cancerous growths.
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benzo-alpha-pyrene which is just a conglomeration of three benzene rings into one master structure
Benzo[a]pyrene has Five rings.
A poor attempt to draw the structure (* = aromatic ring):
* *
* * *
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hmm... so if i pour vinegar into coke which contains sodium benzoate... then add vitamin c for the catalyst would i get benzene? trace amounts? hmm so i guess if its true then the moral of the experiment would be don't eat salt and vinegar chips and down it with coca-cola, then eat an orange? hahaha... what are some other combination of foods that can turn into a plate of nasty carcinogens? hmm i wonder if this is an illegal topic. My intention was to let people know to be more safe.
Not even LiALH4 is strong enough of a reducing agent to reduce a benzoate salt to benzene. If that is how people feel benzene exists in cola, because of reduction by weakly reducing ascorbate salts, then it would be very impossible for even trace amounts of benzene to exist in cola. Some people will believe anything if they are ignorant of basic chemistry.
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science2000 or anyone-
I am curious. Did you read the papers and links mentioned in previous posts on this thread?
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If you want benzene, extracting it from cola, possible or not, isn't going to give you good yields, if any, just decarboxylate sodium benzoate (sold dirt cheapo as food preservative, etc.) with NaOH, and distill off the benzene, (carefully, its the leukaemogen from hell), then redistill it from calcium chloride, or MgSO4.
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No, I really haven't, billnotgatez. Why, has it been proven that trace amounts of benzene exist in cola? I thought it was just a wild theory.
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Benzene Production from Decarboxylation of Benzoic Acid in the Presence of Ascorbic Acid and a Transition-Metal Catalyst
J. Agric. Food Chem., VOl. 41, No. 5, 1993
I was curious is someone had read the above paper and could interpret it for us.
It appears that there was at least one study that showed above drinking water limits in soft drinks, but it has yet to be reported as replicated. They are talking parts per billion.
I have noticed on rare occasion when drinking diet caffeine free cola that there is an off taste. Since the product contains little in the way of food value it is hard to believe that it is biological degradation. One then wonders if there is a chemical process causing this off taste effect.
I wonder how hard it is to test parts per billion benzene content in cola. If it were easy enough then it would be great if citizen scientist across the world tested a small amount collected when imbibing their favorite cola.
It seems the limit in drinking water is 5 or 10 parts per billion and I wonder if 1 part per billion is carcinogenic.
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From what I've read, you will need to drink more than 20 litres of a drink containing benzene at 10 ppb to equal the amount of benzene you would breathe from city air in a day. Maybe we should all go around the city wearing respirators! :P Yay, I'm finally a Full Member :).
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There's probably many more things we're exposed to that's carcinogenic when you're talking about benzene in the ppb's. That must be the least of our worries.
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Benzo[a]pyrene has Five rings.
A poor attempt to draw the structure (* = aromatic ring):
* *
* * *