Studies on styrene concentration in drinking water and hot beverages in some settings

Water bottles and cups composed of polystyrene also contain non-polymerized styrene. Styrene’s toxicological profile is associated with several health issues for humans. Mainly, the central and peripheral nervous systems are highly disturbed by styrene ingestion. Styrene is also considered to be a carcinogenic agent and has been linked to cancer. The HPLC method was validated through prepared QC samples. The HPLC method validated over the range (0.2 - 50 ng) with good linearity r²=0.9998. The validation data proved on average 97.5% accuracy with this method. The analysis further depicted that both sources of water contained styrene; 2.2 and 3.2 ng/mL for fresh and stored water respectively. Styrene was released in larger quantities in boiled water than in cold water. In fresh water, the styrene level was raised by 50% and by 100% for the stored water. On the average, a person may be exposed up to 7 µg/day for cold water, and up to 13 µg/day for hot water. Consequently, we also studied the effect of sugar on bottled water, which showed a 180 and 250% increase on cold and boiled water respectively. Caffeine was also found to increase the leachability of styrene; 150% in case of fresh water and 170% in stored water. Key words: Styrene, water, hot beverages, high-performance liquid chromatography, fluorescent detector (HPLC-FD).