From: Rich Murray [rmforall@att.net] Sent: Monday, August 05, 2002 3:39 AM To: fdadockets@oc.fda.gov Subject: RTM: FDA: (Section E) Tholen: Diet Coke has 5 ppm formaldehyde from aspartame 5.28.2 rmforall RTM: FDA: (Section E) Tholen: Diet Coke has 5 ppm formaldehyde from aspartame 5.28.2 rmforall http://groups.yahoo.com/group/aspartameNM/message/830 Both Tholen in 2002 and Cohen in 1997 found that formaldehyde levels from aspartame in Diet Coke were lower after weeks at 104 and 130 degrees F. However, Tholen found about 5 ppm formaldehyde, versus the maximum of 0.231 ppm by Cohen for 7 new cans kept 70 days at about 69 degrees F. This is about 20X more. Could it be that Tholen's Diet Coke was much older, allowing much more time for its aspartame to decompose into formaldehyde? Or did Tholen's Diet Coke contain much higher levels of aspartame to begin with? ********************************************************** FOOD & DRUG BRANCH (916) 445-2263 DEPARTMENT OF TOXICS (916) 324-1826 DIVISION OF DRINKING WATER & ENVIRONMENTAL MANAGEMENT (916) 323-2308 http://www.dhs.cahwnet.gov/ps/ddwem/chemicals/AL/actionlevels.htm California Dept. of Health Services Drinking Water Action Levels: Contaminants of Current Interest Last Update: May 2, 2002 [extracts] Action Levels (ALs) are health-based advisory levels established by DHS for chemicals in drinking water that lack maximum contaminant levels (MCLs). Chemicals for which ALs are established may eventually be regulated by MCLs, depending on the extent of contamination, the levels observed, and the risk to human health. An AL is the level of a contaminant in drinking water that is considered not to pose a significant health risk to people ingesting that water on a daily basis. It is calculated using standard risk assessment methods for non-cancer and cancer endpoints, and typical exposure assumptions, including a 2-liter per day ingestion rate, a 70-kilogram adult body weight, and a 70-year lifetime. Removal of Source from Service (Recommendation): DHS recommends that the drinking water system take the source out of service if a contaminant is present at more than: 10 times the AL, if the AL is based on noncancer endpoints. A level greater than 10 times the AL reduces the margin of safety provided by the AL. Formaldehyde (noncancer) 0.1 mg/L [ppm] Action Level ********************************************************** This means that a level 10X greater, 1 ppm, would not be allowed in drinking water. For an average 2 L daily drinking water, that would be 2 mg maxium allowable daily ingestion of formaldehyde for an adult. Two liters equals 5.6 12-oz cans of Diet Coke, which, according to Tholen, would provide as much as 5 ppm formaldehyde, 10 mg, 5X more than the EPA allowable limit. Likewise, the methanol supplied, 112 mg in 2 L Diet Coke, is 14X the EPA limit for drinking water. Many aspartame reactors, reporting a typical serious symptom suite, use diet drinks and other sources of aspartame at a level of 2 L daily and more. ************************************************************** Subject: [Aspartame Support] Re: My Science Project (Duplicated Jennifer Cohen's Diet Coke experiment!) Congratulations!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Date: Mon, 27 May 2002 02:57:24 -0400 From: Betty Martini To: "Randy Tholen" Dear Ryan: Congratulations. This is wonderful, that we now have it by two students. I bet Dr. H. J. Roberts is going to give you two of his Gold Stars for this! Jennifer Cohen's experiment was published in the Food Chemical News and I'll send them a copy of this so they know its been replicated. I would personally like to have a copy of the report and analysis from the laboratory. And I'll be happy to send you some more information. I'll put this on the media list so everyone will know and I bet you'll get a lot of emails. Here's my address: Mrs. Betty Martini Mission Possible International 9270 River Club Parkway Duluth, Georgia 30097 Be sure to send me your address and you can expect a nice packet back. Please keep me uptodate. When we get your complete report and analysis we will add it to the www.dorway.com web site. All my best, Betty 770 242-2599 3/23/2002 -0600, you wrote: Hello! You probably do not know me. My name is Ryan Tholen. I am a 5th Grader at St. Mary's school in Tracy, MN. Every year the 5th and 6th graders do a science fair project that gets judged at the school's annual science fair and the two top projects from both grades go to the regional science fair at Mankato, MN. For my science project this year, I chose to do a similar project to the "famous" project that Jennifer Cohen did on aspartame. I named my project "NUTRASWEET OR NUTRAPOISON? I put a mixture of expired and unexpired Diet Coke in an incubator, a refrigerator, and in a place at room temperature. After several weeks I sent samples from each of the three environments to the Braun Intertec lab in Edina, MN. (this cost $180) Let me tell you, I could hardly believe my results! The refrigerated sample had 5.1 parts per million of formaldehyde, the incubated sample had 4.8 parts per million, the sample at room temperature had 4.3 parts per million, and the new can had 4.9 parts per million of formaldehyde in it. These results prove that unexpired aspartame is still bad for you. At the science fair, I got a judge that drinks diet coke. At the end of my presentation I grabbed the diet coke can I had on display and asked her, " Care for a Diet Coke?". She gave me the " do you think I'm going to drink that poison?" look, and walked away. I will be advancing to the regionals on April 20th. Sincerely, Ryan Tholen http://www.geocities.com/aspartame_survivors/tholen.html report [extracts] 1. Refrigerator 5.1 Parts Per Million 2. Incubator 4.0 Parts Per Million 2A. Heated to 130 degrees* 4.1 Parts Per Million 3. Room Temperature 4.3 Parts Per Million 4. Incubator 4.8 Parts Per Million 5. New can 4.9 Parts Per Million * Sample 2A is the same as sample 2 but was heated in the lab to 130 degrees F to simulate sitting in direct sunlight on a hot day. Braun Intertec lab in Edina, MN [Minneapolis] Braun Intertec Corporation Lab Contact/Phone: Bill Katz 952-942-1774 bkatz@brauncorp.com ***************************************************************** Braun Intertec Corporation http://www.brauncorp.com/ (800) 279-6100 (952) 941-5600 Fax: (952) 833-4701 Mail: 6875 Washington Ave. S. Minneapolis, MN 55439 E-Mail: Webmaster@brauncorp.com ***************************************************************** http://www.dorway.com/jcohen.html Jennifer Cohen report in April, 1997 [extracts] THE EFFECTS OF DIFFERENT STORAGE TEMPERATURES ON THE TASTE AND CHEMICAL COMPOSITION OF DIET COKE BY JENNIFER COHEN Jennifer Cohen is an eleven-year old student in Mrs. Simmons' sixth grade Oradell, New Jersey class. The principal of Oradell Public School is Scott Ryan. He may be reached at 201 261-1181. Jennifer conducted an experiment proving aspartame, the artificial sweetener in diet soda, breaks down into two deadly neurotoxins when stored at room temperature and under refrigeration. METHOD: I did my own experiment on aspartame. On January 21, l997, I bought a new case of Diet Coke from the supermarket. I put 7 cans in the refrigerator, 7 cans in my room at room temperature (about 69 degrees) and I put 7 cans in a BOEKEL incubator (80 Watts, 120 AC volts, 0.75 Amps, catalog # 131500) and set the temperature at 40 degrees Celsius which is 104 degrees Fahrenheit. I left them in there for 10 weeks (70 days). I had a thermometer next to each group of cans and I checked the temperatures daily. I took the remaining three cans and brought them to Winston Laboratories in Ridgefield, New jersey to test for a beginning level of aspartame. When I got the test results back, they revealed that there was normally 0.06 per cent of aspartame in the can of diet soda. I chose that temperature because in l985 the National Soft Drink Association reported a similar experiment in which diet soda stored at that temperature turned into formaldehyde. In that experiment they explained that 104 degrees Fahrenheit was equal to a daytime temperature in Phoenix, Arizona over the summer. The National Soft Drink Association recommended that aspartame not be approved for use by people in soda. They published this experiment and their recommendation in the Congressional Record. [ http://www.dorway.com/nsda.html July 28, 1983 ] On April 1, I took the cans of aspartame out of the refrigerator, out of my room and out of the incubator. That day I brought the samples to Winston Laboratory for analysis. I was going to do a taste in my sister's fourth grade class, but the school nurse said that I couldn't because of all the bad things people say about aspartame, so instead I tested the samples on a group of adults. I performed a double blind experiment. My mother helped to label each sample with a number. I conducted the experiment but I did not know which sample each person was drinking. I put all of the cans in a cooler and covered them with ice so that they would be served at the same temperature. I gave each person a small cup of the soda from the refrigerator, from the incubator, from my room, and from a new can of soda fresh from the supermarket. I asked them to rate the taste on a scale of one to four, four being the worst and one being the best. The actual results are to be found in table #1. Table 1 ROOM COLD WARM NEW TEMP. STORAGE STORAGE CAN SAMPLE SAMPLE SAMPLE SAMPLE #517 502 #540 #563 SUBJECT #1 4 4 4 3 SUBJECT #2 3 2 4 1 SUBJECT #3 2 3 3 2 SUBJECT #4 1 2 4 2 SUBJECT #5 2 2 4 1 SUBJECT #6 2 3 4 1 SUBJECT #7 2 3 3 4 SUBJECT #8 3 2 4 3 SUBJECT #9 3 2 4 1 SUBJECT #10 3 3 4 2 AVERAGE 2.5 2.6 3.8 2.0 Table #2 contains the results of the testing conducted on the samples analyzed by Winston Laboratories. In the sample that was in the refrigerator all that was left of the 0.06 per cent of the aspartame was 0.058 percent. That extra aspartame had turned into 0.001 percent DKP and 53.5 parts per billion of formaldehyde. In the sample from my room, all that was left of the 0.06 per cent aspartame was 0.051 per cent. The extra aspartame had turned into 0.002 percent DKP and 231 parts per billion of formaldehyde. In the sample that was in the incubator all that was left of the 0.06 percent aspartame was 0.026 per cent. The extra aspartame had turned into 0.010 per cent DkP and 76.2 parts per billion in the formaldehyde. Table 2 ASPARTAME DKP FORMALDEHYDE % % Parts per billion BASELINE CAN 0.060% * * SAMPLE # 502 0.058% 0.001% 53.5 (refrigerated) SAMPLE # 517 0.051% 0.002% 231.0 (room temperature) SAMPLE #540 0.026% 0.010% 76.2 (incubator) SAMPLE # 563 * * * (new can) * Sample #563 (new can of Diet Coke was not tested by the lab. It was used for the taste test only. The baseline can was not tested for formaldehyde or DKP because it was assumed that FDA would ban any new product containing poison. The total cost of testing was $1250. This may not be a lot of money to a drug company but it is to me. As it is, I will be baby-sitting for the summer of 1997 to pay for this study. -JC DISCUSSION: There was an obvious preference for the newly purchased sample of Diet Coke. The scores for the sample in the refrigerator and room temperature were similar but were not as high as the new soda. The score for the incubator sample were very low. Nearly everybody hated the taste. There are taste differences. Ten people preferred the new soda to the other three samples. With 1 being the best and 4 being the worst, their average score for the new soda was 2.0. The aspartame contained in diet soda stored over time can break down into formaldehyde and DKP, two very dangerous poisons. Taste tests revealed a noticeable difference among tasters. The higher the heat of storage, the worse the taste. Diet soda stored for ten weeks loses flavor. Aspartame in that soda breaks down into two products, formaldehyde and DKP. The warmer the temperature, the greater the loss of aspartame and the greater the increase in DKP. Temperature creates two effects. First, the higher the temperature of storage, the higher the level of DKP in the soda. Second, room temperature seems to create the highest levels of formaldehyde in soda. At very high temperatures, the formaldehyde breaks down. However, even stored in a refrigerator at cold temperature, the aspartame breaks down into formaldehyde. After diet soda containing aspartame is purchased it should not be stored in the heat or under any condition for a long period of time. Further research should be performed with more samples at different temperatures for different time periods so that safety levels can be determined. Concerning aspartame, the FDA says, "we believe that based on all the information that we received to date that this is a safe product." I say, "Decide for yourself." Jennifer Cohen Bibliography 1) Artificial Sweeteners. "The World Book Encyclopedia" 1997 2) Azarnoff, Daniel. "Aspartame" McGraw-Hill. Encyclopedia of Science and Technology 1987 3) Constantine, Alex. "The NutraPoison" http://www.dorway.com/possible.html (items 26 and 27) March 13, 1997 4) Jibrin, Janis. "How Sweet It Is." American Health December 1995: 84-85 5) Jibrin, Janis. "Is Sugar Poison?" Mademoiselle December 1995: 84-85 6) Lepke, Janet. "A Dieter's Guide To Sugar Substitutes." Consumer's Digest May/June 1995: 71-74 7) Rao, K.S., McConnell, R.G., Waisman, H.A. SC-18862 52 Week Oral Toxicity Study In The Infant Monkey 8) Roberts, H.J. Aspartame (Nutra Sweet) Is It Safe? Philadelphia: The Charles Press, 1990] 9) Roberts, H.J. Sweetener Dearest. West Palm Beach: The Sunshine Sentinel Press, 1992 IF you have a strong need to confirm: For those who require independent confirmation of all facts Winston Laboratories located in Ridgefield, New Jersey, (201-440-0022) ran the tests on the diet cokes used in this experiment. ********************************************************** Rich Murray, MA Room For All rmforall@att.net 1943 Otowi Road, Santa Fe NM USA 87505 505-986-9103 http://groups.yahoo.com/group/aspartameNM/messages for 862 posts http://groups.yahoo.com/group/aspartameNM/message/861 brief summary http://groups.yahoo.com/group/aspartameNM/message/862 long summary http://groups.yahoo.com/group/aspartameNM/message/860 RTM: FDA: objections to neotame approval (Section A) 8.4.2 rmforall http://groups.yahoo.com/group/aspartameNM/message/652 Smith JD, Terpening CM, Schmidt SO, Gums JG Relief of fibromyalgia symptoms following discontinuation of dietary excitotoxins. Ann Pharmacother 2001 Jun; 35(6): 702-6. Malcolm Randall Veterans Affairs Medical Center, Gainesville, FL, USA. terpening@fpmg.health.ufl.edu cterpeni@ufl.edu gums@fpmg.health.ufl.edu siggy@hands.ufl.edu http://groups.yahoo.com/group/aspartameNM/message/782 RTM: Smith, Terpening, Schmidt, Gums: full text: aspartame, MSG, fibromyalgia 1.17.2 rmforall http://groups.yahoo.com/group/aspartameNM/message/628 Rich Murray: Professional House Doctors: Singer: EPA: CPSC: formaldehyde toxicity 6.10.1 rmforall http://groups.yahoo.com/group/aspartameNM/message/645 Rich Murray: 18 recent formaldehyde toxicity [Comet assay] abstracts 6.25.1 rmforall http://www.dorway.com/blayenn.html Russell L. Blaylock, MD dodd@netdoor.com Excitotoxins, neurodegeneration and neurodevelopment. The Medical Sentinel Journal 1999 Fall; (95 references) russell@misnet.com 601-982-1175 http://ww.presidiotex.com/barcelona/index.html Trocho C, Pardo R, Rafecas I, Virgili J, Remesar X, Fernandez-Lopez JA, Alemany M ["Trok-ho"] Formaldehyde derived from dietary aspartame binds to tissue components in vivo. Life Sci 1998 Jun 26; 63(5): 337-49. Departament de Bioquimica i Biologia Molecular, Facultat de Biologia, Universitat de Barcelona, Spain. http://www.presidiotex.com/barcelona/index.html Maria Alemany, PhD (male) alemany@porthos.bio.ub.es http://groups.yahoo.com/group/aspartameNM/message/689 Karikas GA, Schulpis KH, Reclos GJ, Kokotos G Measurement of molecular interaction of aspartame and its metabolites with DNA. Clin Biochem 1998 Jul; 31(5): 405-7. Dept. of Chemistry, University of Athens, Greece http://www.chem.uoa.gr gkokotos@atlas.uoa.gr http://www.dorway.com/barua.html Dr. J. Barua (ophthalmic surgeon), Dr. Arun Bal (surgeon) Emerging facts about aspartame. Journal Of The Diabetic Association Of India 1995; 35 (4): (79 references) barua@giasbm01.vsnl.net.in "...the total amount of methanol absorbed will be approximately 10% of aspartame ingested. An EPA assessment of methanol states that methanol "is considered a cumulative poison due to the low rate of excretion once it is absorbed." The absorbed methanol is then slowly converted to formaldehyde..." "Reaction of formaldehyde with DNA has been observed, by spectrophotometry and electron microscopy, to result in irreversible denaturation." "DKP has been implicated in the occurence of brain tumors." http://www.dorway.com/wmonte.txt Dr. Woodrow C. Monte Aspartame: methanol, and the public health. Journal of Applied Nutrition 1984; 36 (1): 42-54. (62 references) Professsor of Food Science Director of the Food Science and Nutrition Laboratory Arizona State University, Tempe, Arizona 85287 6411 South River Drive #61 Tempe, Arizona 85283-3337 602-965-6938 woody.monte@asu.edu The methanol from 2 L of diet soda, 5.6 12-oz cans, 20 mg/can, is 112 mg, 10% of the aspartame. The EPA limit for water is 7.8 mg daily for methanol (wood alcohol), a deadly cumulative poison. Many users drink 1-2 L daily. The reported symptoms are entirely consistent with chronic methanol toxicity. (Fresh orange juice has 34 mg/L, but, like all juices, has 16 times more ethanol, which strongly protects against methanol.) **********************************************************