TIME: Almanac 1993/TIME Almanac 1993.iso/time/022690/0226570.000

Text File | 1992-08-28 | 6KB | 117 lines

                                                                                FOOD, Page 43

Let Them Drink Seltzer


The champagne of bottled water loses its sparkle

By NANCY GIBBS -- With reporting by Bruce Crumley/Paris and
Janice M. Horowitz/New York


    For those who believed in the verities of the '80s -- that
greed is good, that one can never be too rich or too thin, and
that abstinence and exercise will lead to eternal life -- the
new decade spells trying times. Mike Tyson's crown has toppled,
and the Trumps have split. Oat bran is no panacea; Drexel is
bankrupt. "I suspect," says editor E. Graydon Carter, 40,
co-founder of Spy magazine, "that when they find red suspenders
cause back problems, that will be the final nail in the yuppie
coffin."

    For the faithful who spent their days selling bonds and
their nights at the juice bar, the holy water was Perrier, a
drink with the flavor of old rocks and the price of cheap
perfume. Shielded from the light in its distinctive green
bowling-pin bottles, Perrier was the drink of choice of a whole
generation that was equally suspicious of whisky and Pepsi. But
those who are busy toasting the beginning of a new decade may
have to return to Scotch or soda -- at least for a while.

    Last week Perrier announced that it was recalling its
product worldwide, having already reclaimed 72 million bottles
from stores and restaurants in North America. Reason: traces of
benzene, a known carcinogen, had been found in the water, first
in the U.S., then at the very plant where the water is bottled
in Vergeze, France. Yuppies shuddered, bartenders flinched, lime
futures tumbled and normally well-hydrated joggers faced
desiccation rather than switch to Schweppes. To the true
believers, those who used it to spray their camellias or rinse
their lingerie or boil fusilli or water their Scotch, there
could be no substitute for Perrier.

    For Paris-based Source Perrier, which did $119 million in
U.S. sales in 1988, protecting the sanctity of its product is
crucial. How, after all, does a company persuade a population
that the presence of a few bubbles transforms the most common
substance on earth into a fashion statement? With its reverent
ads and fitness-cult following, Perrier won a unique niche in
the psyche and vocabulary of the '80s. "People ask for Perrier
when they want mineral water," says Dan Rose, a bartender at an
uptown Manhattan restaurant, "the same way they ask for Kleenex
when they want a tissue. Perrier has come to mean mineral
water." Riding the decade's fitness fad, sales jumped 190% in
seven years.

    Then one day last month, county water testers in North
Carolina, who use Perrier's purity in their labs to gauge local
water quality, found that the French product was contaminated
with excessive levels of benzene, a solvent used, among other
things, to make Styrofoam. The Food and Drug Administration
ordered random tests and found similar benzene levels in 13
bottles. FDA officials noted that there was not much danger.
Drinking two small bottles of contaminated Perrier a day, they
estimated, would increase one's lifetime risk of cancer by only
one in a million.

    Nonetheless, Perrier rushed to assure customers that the
source was still pure. "The decision to recall was made by the
company itself," said FDA spokesman Chris Lecos. "We didn't
request it." Pressed for an explanation by French reporters,
Perrier officials at first speculated that the chemical came
from an overly fastidious workman who used a solution containing
benzene to clean grease from some bottling machinery. If indeed
only one bottling line was affected, production could resume
quickly, and the bottles would be back on store shelves within
weeks.

    But the explanation did not ring quite true, partly because
bottling plants, fearing just such contamination, do not usually
use toxic chemicals to clean their equipment. Days later,
Perrier officials abandoned the careless-worker hypothesis and
disclosed that, in fact, all bottling lines had been
contaminated. The new explanation: the real fault lay in
saturated filters, which someone had failed to replace. It turns
out that Perrier straight from the source contains traces of
benzene, which occurs naturally in the gases that give Perrier
its fizz, and that filters are routinely used to extract the
chemical. "I think it is fairly clear that they rearranged the
truth," says Anne Mougenot, an analyst with Didier Philippe
brokerage in Paris. "At first they grabbed for anything, and now
they have this theory of saturated filters."

    Since other mineral-water brands from nearby springs have
also been found to be contaminated, some speculate that a
drought in the region may have raised the level of natural
contaminants in the water. This would tend to clog the filters
more quickly. "Of course they cannot say this," notes Mougenot,
"because it would be close to saying that the source is really
polluted."

    The French do not seem to be losing much sleep over the
slipup; in fact, the little green bottles were readily available
in Paris cafes last week, and could be back in the U.S. by next
month. This will surely relieve those who quailed at the
prospect of entering the Decency Decade without it. But for
others, it may not make much difference one way or the other.
Much of the heartland never quite embraced the idea of paying
more for a glass of water than for a bottle of beer, and in Los
Angeles Perrier is already passe. "Evian is hotter than
Perrier," says Roland Fasel, the food-and-beverage manager of
the swank Bel-Air Hotel. "It even sells for breakfast." In New
York City apostates are already appearing. "I'm going to order
plain old Brooklyn seltzer," says entertainment lawyer Jonathan
Horn. "If I'm going to drink benzene, by God, it's gonna be good
old American benzene."