Levels of Benzoic Acid in Soft Drinks and Fruit Juices in Ghana

Abstract

Benzoic acid is one of the most commonly used food preservatives in the food and beverage industry in Ghana. The maximum accepted level of benzoic acid in beverages stipulated by national and European legislation is 150 ppm. Thirty four (34) different brands of soft drinks and 16 brands of fruit juices available on the markets and shops in Ghana were analysed for benzoic acid by high performance liquid chromatography with a UV detector. Chromatographic separation was achieved with phenomenex synergi 4µ polar-RP 80A 150×2mm 4 micron column with ammonium acetate buffer (pH = 4.4) and acetonitrile (90:10) as the mobile phase with a flow rate of 0.4 mL/min. The objective of this work was to determine the levels of benzoic acid in soft drinks and fruit juices on the markets of Ghana. The concentration of benzoic acid in the samples was calculated by external standard method and the level of benzoic acid ranged from not detected to 564.00 mg/L for the soft drinks and from not detected to 148 mg/L for the fruit juice respectively. The mean recoveries for both soft and fruit drinks ranged from 107 to 110%. Six (17.60%) of the soft drink samples contained levels of benzoic acid above the 150 mg/L which is the limit set by World Health Organization (WHO). The levels of benzoic acid in the fruit juice samples were within stipulated limit. From the results, the Ghana Food and Drugs Authority needs to monitor and regulate levels of preservatives used by some of the soft drinks manufacturers in Ghana especially those whose products exceeded the set limit.