Group 1 Carcinogen Detected in Bottled Water Exposed to Sunlight, Yet Enforcement Delayed by Two Years

00:00 Drinking bottled water today, and a Group 1 carcinogen?
02:35 How harmful is it?
05:26 Implemented on July 31, but with a two-year grace period?

1. Drinking bottled water today, and a Group 1 carcinogen?
Hello, I am Jang Se-man, climate and environment correspondent. The weather is extremely hot. Expressions like a furnace or steam room do not even sound exaggerated. Yet, even under this blazing sunlight, if you look closely while walking down the street, you will notice piles of bottled water placed right outside convenience stores and supermarkets. Because there is a lack of storage space inside the stores, they are kept outside like this.

[Convenience Store Employee : (The bottled water) inevitably takes up space and can cause inconvenience for movement (inside the store), so (therefore) keeping it outside is basically the default....]

What happens to bottled water exposed to severe heat and intense sunlight like these days? This issue, or more precisely, the problem of "pet bottles of water exposed to direct sunlight," was directly investigated and tested four years ago by the Board of Audit and Inspection during an audit of the management status of drinking water quality. They brought in four bottles of water stored in plastic bottles, which included three domestic products and one imported product. They set up a chamber mimicking harsh conditions with an intense ultraviolet intensity and temperature of 50°C, similar to a summer afternoon around 2 to 3 PM. After exposing the bottled water inside for 15 and 30 days respectively, they extracted water from the bottles and tested its quality. The Board of Audit and Inspection explained that a 15-day exposure corresponds to about 3.9 months in natural conditions, while a 30-day exposure test corresponds to about 7.8 months in natural conditions. When tested this way, formaldehyde, a Group 1 carcinogen, along with another hazardous substance, acetaldehyde, and some heavy metal antimony, were detected in some products.

[Kang Sang-wook, Professor of Chemical and Energy Engineering at Sangmyung University : When PET molecules are continuously exposed to ultraviolet rays, the (molecular) chains break. (In the process), the chemical substances generated are aldehydes.]

Formaldehyde is classified as a Group 1 carcinogen by the International Agency for Research on Cancer and is known as a causative agent of sick building syndrome and atopic dermatitis. Antimony is a toxic heavy metal used in plating or pigment work, and if poisoned, it causes gastrointestinal diseases while also being a substance suspected of carcinogenicity.

2. How harmful is it?
Now, we know that hazardous substances are released, but the more important question would be how harmful this leaching amount actually is to the human body. Looking at formaldehyde first, it was detected at levels lower than South Korea's drinking water quality standards for formaldehyde. The current water quality standard for formaldehyde is 0.5 milligrams per liter, and in the 15-day exposure test, 0.18 milligrams was confirmed to have leached from an imported product. In the 30-day exposure test, one imported product showed 0.31 milligrams, and the highest among the three domestic products was 0.17 milligrams. Although domestic standards were met, the situation changes according to the standards of countries with strict drinking water quality standards. For example, in Japan, the allowable limit is 0.08 milligrams, so three of the four products mentioned earlier exceed the Japanese standard. What about the leaching amount of the heavy metal antimony? About 0.003 to 0.004 milligrams came out in the 15-day exposure, and about 0.001 to 0.003 milligrams in the 30-day exposure test. However, in the case of antimony and acetaldehyde, there are no domestic water quality standards. On the other hand, quite a few countries have established allowable standards for antimony: Australia at 0.003, the United States at 0.006, and Japan at 0.015. This means Australia has particularly tightened regulations. Compared to the standards of these countries, no products exceeded the US or Japanese allowable limits. However, quite a few products exceeded the Australian standard. Out of a total of eight cases from the 15-day and 30-day tests, four exceeded Australia's allowable limit. What these figures mean is not that you should immediately stop drinking bottled water exposed to sunlight, but rather that the tendency for hazardous substances inside PET bottles to actually leach out when exposed to high temperatures and strong ultraviolet rays for a long time, as seen lately, has been proven true. It was also revealed as a fact that formaldehyde and acetaldehyde, which were not detected at all before the exposure tests, leached out after the tests. In the case of antimony, trace amounts were present even before the test, but the amount increased much more after undergoing 15 to 30 days of exposure to ultraviolet rays.

3. Implemented on July 31, but with a two-year grace period?
Consequently, based on these test results, the Board of Audit and Inspection requested corrective actions from the Ministry of Environment. It is now the Ministry of Climate, Energy and Environment. They urged the ministry to establish management standards through meticulous reviews, such as conducting hazardous substance leaching tests under various conditions in the manufacturing and distribution processes of bottled water in PET bottles, and to devise measures to distribute bottled water while minimizing exposure to direct sunlight. Accordingly, it took four years for the ministry to revise and enforce the regulations. The revised notice on labeling standards for bottled drinking water was implemented starting last week on July 31. Previously, there was only a principle to hygienically store water in a cold, dark, and cool place, but moving forward, it is mandatory to store water away from windows where direct sunlight enters indoor spaces. In addition, if there are windows, devices to block light must be installed on the windows. Furthermore, if water must inevitably be stored outdoors, covers must be used. However, the problem is that although the regulations mentioned now have been applied starting July 31, a two-year grace period has been granted. What does a grace period mean here? It means that while the system itself goes into effect, crackdowns will not be conducted, so businesses should manage well on their own. Of course, considering the circumstances of convenience stores and supermarkets, it will not be easy to secure additional space given the shortage of indoor space. However, the Board of Audit and Inspection also investigated the distribution status of bottled water. When they randomly inspected 270 retail stores and convenience stores in Seoul, more than 100 stores, or 37%, were storing bottled water in PET bottles exposed to outdoor direct sunlight environments. Given this, even if it is difficult to immediately secure indoor space, making covers mandatory for outdoor storage is a measure that could be implemented right away. Considering that ultraviolet rays from direct sunlight play a major role, not just high temperatures, simply blocking them with covers can yield significant effects, making this a truly regrettable measure. I mentioned earlier that the experiment at the Board of Audit and Inspection was conducted four years ago, in 2022, but in fact, that was not the first time. Among experts, this issue was raised as a suspicious problem well over 10 years ago. Therefore, the National Institute of Environmental Research already conducted experiments back in 2013. It was confirmed that acetaldehyde leached out above the threshold value, meaning at a level where humans can smell it with their nose, leading to the conclusion that high-temperature exposure in summer should be avoided. Counting from that time, it took 13 years from raising the issue and conducting scientific experiments to the revision of the notice, and with another two-year grace period announced now, one cannot shake the feeling that this is an excessively passive response. I hope that voluntary measures will be taken by the industry at least.

Reported by Jang Se-man | Produced by Shin Hee-suk | Video by Seo Byung-wook | Design by Yook Do-hyun | Produced by SBS Digital News
※ Please note: This article was translated by AI and may contain errors.