A recent study by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) indicated that some beverages contained benzene at levels above the federal drinking water standard of 5 parts per billion (ppb). In tests conducted by the FDA, Crystal Light Sunrise Classic Orange was reported to contain benzene levels as high as 87.9 ppb. A group of researchers from Texas wanted to characterize benzene concentrations in the Crystal Light beverage and to quantify potential human health risks.

Twenty-eight samples of CLSCO were obtained from retail stores in Houston, Tex., U.S.A. The mean benzene concentrations in 16-ounce original and new formulation bottles were 90 and 0.18 ppb, respectively, while 64-ounce bottles contained an average of 3.38 ppb.

A variety of exposure scenarios were evaluated to determine potential health risks using both deterministic and probabilistic techniques. In the deterministic analyses, upper bound point estimate cancer risks ranged from 5.4E-6 to 8.7E-8, while hazard indices ranged from 0.28 to 0.00104. Probabilistic analyses were conducted to develop more realistic cancer risk estimates. In these analyses, the 50th and 95th percentile cancer risk estimates were 3.7E-6 and 8.0E-6, and the 50th and 95th percentile hazard indices were 0.19 and 0.42, respectively.