Why health advocates are concerned about a chemical in your decaf

Activists are petitioning the FDA to ban a harmful chemical used to remove caffeine from coffee. But experts say you don't need to panic.

As more and more people turn to decaffeinated coffee, either due to health concerns or personal preference, there’s growing scrutiny of the methods that are used to remove caffeine from coffee beans—and their health implications.

Environmental activist groups have recently petitioned the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to consider a ban on a chemical that is popularly used to make decaf coffee.

Called methylene chloride, the chemical was recently banned for industrial use by the Environmental Protection Agency, due to the fact that it can cause certain cancers, as well as neurotoxicity, liver damage, and sometimes death. “There are alternatives,” says Jaclyn Bowen, the executive director of the Clean Label Project, a nonprofit organization that is advocating for replacing the use of methylene chloride to decaffeinate coffee with other options.

(How the health benefits of decaf compare to regular coffee.)

But this doesn’t necessarily mean your decaf habit is in jeopardy. Here’s what to know about methylene chloride—and the alternatives that already exist.

To decaffeinate coffee, you need some type of solvent. Soaking coffee beans in a hot mixture of the solvent helps extract the caffeine molecules—leaving behind decaffeinated coffee once the solvent is removed.

“There are basically four main solvents that are used,” says Meredith Worthington, the executive editor for ConsumerLabs.com.

These include methylene chloride, which is also called the European method, and is the most widely used method; ethyl acetate, which is sometimes called the “natural solvent,” due to the fact that it is present in a number of fruits, such as bananas and sugarcane; the Swiss water method, which uses hot water to extract the caffeine; and the carbon dioxide method, which uses liquid carbon dioxide. Depending on the method, this can affect the taste, as well as the chemical composition of the coffee.

Methylene chloride has long been the most widely used method, with the Food and Drug Administration mandating that the remaining levels in decaf coffee cannot exceed 10 parts per million. And independent testing of coffee brands has consistently found levels of methylene chloride that are below the FDA limits.

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Not everyone agrees that methylene chloride should be banned for decaffeinating coffee. As the National Coffee Association wrote in a recent press release, “The overwhelming weight of scientific evidence shows that drinking European Method decaf—like all coffee—is associated with significant health benefits, including longer lives and reduced risk of multiple cancers and chronic diseases.”

Still, Worthington says, “Some people just don’t like that, especially when there are other methods that exist that would result in no concerning solvents. There are a number of companies that only use water in their extraction.”

Another major concern by advocates is the fact that many of the people who are turning to decaffeinated coffee are already more vulnerable to the effects of trace chemicals. This includes pregnant women and people with health conditions, who may decide to switch to decaf for health reasons.

As a result, alternatives like the Swiss water method are becoming increasingly used by major coffee companies, such as Peet’s Coffee, due to consumer concerns.

In addition to the concerns about the use of methylene chloride to decaffeinate coffee, there may be some subtle differences in health benefits, depending on which process has been used.

ConsumerLabs.com has done testing on the effect of the different types of decaffeination process on green tea, which uses the same processes as coffee beans. “What we found was that brands that decaffeinated the tea using ethyl acetate tended to have lower levels of EGCG, which is considered to be the active constituent of green tea, thought to give it its health benefits,” Worthington says. “Presumably, the same issue would exist for coffee as well.”

(How coffee helps forests grow faster.)

In another study, published in 2010, researchers looked at the levels of a type of antioxidant that is found in coffee, called phenols. They found that antioxidant levels in decaf coffee did vary according to which extraction method was used, although not by a huge margin. Decaf coffee that was prepared using the Swiss water method or methylene chloride resulted in slightly lower levels of phenols than using ethyl acetate or liquid carbon dioxide. However, in all of these methods, decaf retained more than 80 percent of the original antioxidant levels compared to regular coffee.

In the meantime, people who want to know how their preferred brand of coffee is decaffeinated can check the website CheckYourDecaf.org, or reach out to the coffee company. As Bowen notes, the Clean Label Project is also pushing for coffee companies to list the type of decaffeination process used on their labels, so that consumers can make an informed decision.

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