MEC&F Expert Engineers : 04/24/15

Friday, April 24, 2015

AS SALES WERE CRUSHED, DIET PEPSI DUMPS ASPARTAME. WILL REPLACE IT WITH A BLEND OF SUCRALOSE AND ACESULFAME POTASSIUM





APRIL 24, 2015

PepsiCo Inc. will start selling Diet Pepsi without aspartame later this year, one of the biggest changes to the beverage in decades, after a consumer backlash against the artificial sweetener crushed sales.

The company will replace aspartame with a blend of sucralose and acesulfame potassium in Diet Pepsi, Caffeine Free Diet Pepsi and Wild Cherry Diet Pepsi sold in the U.S. beginning in August. The move follows a 5.2 percent decline in Diet Pepsi’s sales volume last year, according to Beverage-Digest. Sales of Coca-Cola’s Diet Coke, which also uses aspartame, dropped 6.6 percent.

PepsiCo is getting the jump on Diet Coke, the country’s No. 1 sugar-free soda, in removing the controversial sweetener. Consumers have been backing away from both brands in recent years, fearful that the lab-created sweetener may cause cancer. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has said there’s no proof of a health risk from aspartame.

“Decades of studies have shown that aspartame is safe, but the reality is that consumer demand in the U.S. has been evolving,” Seth Kaufman, senior vice president of Pepsi and the company’s flavors drinks in North America, said in an interview. “The U.S. diet cola consumer has been asking and asking and asking for an aspartame-free great diet cola.”

Coke’s Response

Even so, Coca-Cola isn’t budging.

“There are currently no plans to change the sweetener for Diet Coke, America’s favorite no-calorie soft drink,” Scott Williamson, a spokesman, said in an e-mail. “All of the beverages we offer and ingredients we use are safe.”

PepsiCo’s decision came after consumer complaints accelerated during the past two years -- with feedback flowing in through call lines, social media and letters, Kaufman said. In surveys, aspartame was the top reason given by consumers for drinking less of the diet cola, he said.

 “It’s been going on for some time, and the volume of it over the past two years has really been high,” Kaufman said.

PepsiCo, based in Purchase, New York, doesn’t have plans to replace aspartame in Diet Mountain Dew, despite a 3 percent sales decline. That product is the company’s best-selling diet beverage after Diet Pepsi.

There are no plans to remove aspartame from other PepsiCo soft drinks either, Kaufman said. The focus for the change is on colas with declining sales. With aspartame-sweetened Pepsi Max, for example, consumers didn’t cite the ingredient as one of the top 10 reasons they were drinking less of it, Kaufman said.

FDA Approval

The FDA approved aspartame for use in some beverages and foods in 1981. Two years later, the ingredient was allowed in carbonated beverages. It was then ruled a “general-purpose sweetener” in 1996, giving it freer rein.

“Aspartame is one of the most exhaustively studied substances in the human food supply, with more than 100 studies supporting its safety,” the agency said. “FDA scientists have reviewed scientific data regarding the safety of aspartame in food and concluded that it is safe for the general population under certain conditions.”

People with a rare hereditary disease that makes it hard for them to metabolize aspartame’s phenylalanine are advised to limit its ingestion, the FDA warns. The agency requires labeling to inform people who are at risk.

Acesulfame potassium, meanwhile, was first approved for food in 1988 and is used in drinks such as Coke Zero, which also contains some aspartame. 

Sucralose, marketed as Splenda and used in a version of Diet Coke, was first approved in 1998. The FDA has deemed both sweeteners safe.

Defending Aspartame

Coca-Cola, based in Atlanta, took a shot at the aspartame revolt in mid-2013 with print ads in national publications that defended its safety. Sales of Diet Coke and Diet Pepsi both declined almost 7 percent that year.

The crisis, which came on top of a consumer reaction against high-calorie sugar-sweetened drinks, has forced Coca-Cola and PepsiCo into the lab for solutions. Both have aggressively pursued a natural, noncaloric ingredient called stevia, which is extracted from a leaf and is 200 to 300 times sweeter than sugar.

Stevia doesn’t work so well in colas, however. It gives off a metallic aftertaste when used in higher doses. So the soda makers are researching ways to ferment and bioengineer copies of a better-tasting stevia molecule found in the leaf.

As for aspartame, Kaufman declined to say how PepsiCo’s decision would affect Coca-Cola, saying only that “we’re excited that we’re the first scaled business to do it.”
Source: Bloomberg.com

ANOTHER CRANE ARM MALFUNCTION, ANOTHER WORKER CRUSHED AND KILLED IN MIDTOWN MANHATTAN, NEW YORK CITY. WHAT A WAY TO END THE WORK-WEEK











APRIL 24, 2015

MANHATTAN, NY

A construction worker died Friday in a crane accident while unloading materials from his truck at a Midtown work site, authorities said.

The 40-year-old victim, whose name was not released, was pinned beneath the arm of the boom crane attached to the flatbed truck at about 11:45 a.m., according to city officials and witnesses.

The dead man was clutching his phone when the fatal accident occurred — with a piece of the crane pinning the helpless victim to the sidewalk, an eyewitness said.

“They were using the crane on the truck to lift materials up to the second or third floor,” said delivery man Javier Mendez, who walked past the site. “Everything seemed normal ... it was fine.”

The truck driver was on the sidewalk as the materials were lifted off the truck when there was a mechanical problem with the crane’s boom arm, police said.

When the driver went to check on the problem, the arm suddenly collapsed and mortally injured the man, police said.

“The crane part of the truck, the hydraulic, collapsed on him,” said a worker at the scene.

The accident occurred on E. 44th St. near Second Ave., where a white blanket covered a lone body after the midday tragedy. Fire officials confirmed the accident involved a crane, and there were no immediate reports of additional injuries.

“The crane fell on him,” said construction worker Juan Jose. “We were upstairs working.”

Source: nydaily news.com

//-----------------------//

A construction worker died after being pinned by a collapsed crane in Midtown, authorities said. 

The 40-year-old worker was unloading material from his truck and became pinned against the flatbed of a truck when the arm of a boom crane suddenly collapsed on a construction site at 219 East 44 Street, between Second and Third Avenues in Manhattan, at 11:44 a.m.  He was pinned beneath the arm of the boom crane attached to the flatbed truck.

The crane operator noticed the machine’s hydraulic system was leaking from a hose in the bed of the truck, police said. As he was attempting to fix it, the hose burst, causing the crane to collapse on top of him, according to police.

“He was holding a phone,” said Fernando Bajana, 52, a garage worker who saw the chaotic scene unfold from across the street. “His face was red. He was trapped under the arm of the crane machine.”

People were yelling and screaming as they tried to get the truck driver’s attention, he added.

Bajana said the trapped worker was often directing people at the construction site. 

The crane truck is operated by Kenry Contracting Inc., located in Yonkers. The company declined to comment at this time. 

The construction site, which is the future home of the luxury Even Hotel, received several complaints prior to the accident — and the Department of Buildings issued two partial stop work orders. All of the complaints were eventually dismissed by the DOB.

1 PERSON KILLED IN FIRE AT ABANDONED PENINSULA CHEMICAL REFINERY SITE IN CALIFORNIA











APRIL 24, 2015

EAST PALO ALTO, CALIF. (AP)

A person was killed this morning in a fire at an abandoned chemical refinery site in East Palo Alto, firefighters said.

Firefighters responded just after 1 a.m. to the abandoned Romic Chemical Refinery Site (aka Romic Environmental Technology recycling plant) on Bay Road on a report of a fire. 

The fire was located inside a double-wide trailer at the site, which was used during the dismantling of the facility years ago and had been left behind, he said. The trailer, he said, did not have power or heat.

They later discovered a body in the burned out trailer, firefighters said.

The site had been abandoned years ago (2007), and the only items left on the former plant site were trailers and storage containers, firefighters said. There was no power to the trailers, and investigators suspect the victim was transient, possibly using the trailer for shelter, firefighters said.

The cause of the fire is still under investigation. The identity of the person killed has not been released.

--Bay City News



Romic Environmental Technologies Corporation (or "Romic") is a former hazardous waste management facility located in East Palo Alto, California near the San Francisco Bay. In 2007, Romic management closed the facility. It ceased accepting waste as of August 3, 2007.

Romic operated the 12.6 acre facility from approximately 1964 to 2007. Historical facility operations included solvent recycling, fuel blending, wastewater treatment, and hazardous waste storage and treatment. Soil and ground water beneath the site became contaminated as a result of Romic's past operations and that of its predecessor companies dating back to the 1950s. 

The primary contaminants in the soil and ground water are volatile organic compounds (VOCs). Typical VOCs found at Romic are solvents such as trichloroethene (TCE) which were used to clean metal parts. Ground water contamination extends across most of the site to a depth of at least 80 feet below ground surface. The ground water is salty and is not a drinking water source.

In July 2008, U.S. EPA made a remedy decision for clean-up of Romic's soil and ground water contamination. Enhanced biological treatment would be employed, in which a mixture of cheese whey, molasses, and water is injected into the subsurface to enhance the natural breakdown of the contaminants.

U.S. EPA selected the final remedy based on public input, new information, and analysis.

Contaminated sediments in the slough adjacent to Romic will be covered in a later action.


CHEMICAL SPILL AND FIRE INSIDE A TRAILER AT A BANGOR, MAINE FEDEX FACILITY








APRIL 24, 2015

BANGOR, MAINE
 
Bangor firefighters responded to a fire and chemical spill Friday morning at a trailer at the FexEx facility on Godsoe Road.

Fire was in the trailer and not in the building.  The fire department pulled the trailer away and isolated the fire.

The chemical fire was put out properly by the fire department.

Source: bangormaine.com