How I got the flame retardant out of my Gatorade

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/feb/06/bvo-flame-retardant-gatorade-sarah-kavanagh

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"David v Goliath." That's how the Today Show described my battle against Gatorade to get a controversial chemical out of its sports drinks.

It's true, I am definitely the underdog: I'm a 16-year-old high school student from Mississippi, and even I wasn't sure Gatorade was going to listen. And like David, I was up against a lot. In his case, it was a giant. In mine, it was a giant, multimillion-dollar corporation. But unlike the David in the story, I wasn't alone. I had hundreds of thousands of other Davids fighting alongside me.

Here's what happened: a couple months ago, I was drinking an orange Gatorade, one of my favorites, and I started to Google the ingredients on the label. (I'm vegan, so I am always curious about what's in my food.)

When I saw that Brominated Vegetable Oil, or BVO for short, was in my drink, I was shocked: as I soon learned, this is a chemical originally patented as a flame retardant in plastics and is now banned from food stuffs in Japan and Europe because of health concerns.

I love Gatorade. I play sports, and I care about my health. Discovering that a brand I love and trust was putting a potentially dangerous chemical in my drink was very unexpected.

I did some research, and here's what I found: BVO is linked to some serious health problems. And in other countries where BVO is banned, Gatorade already uses alternatives that are better for our bodies.

All this time, I trusted Gatorade was good for me – but here was this gross chemical in my favorite drink, and it wasn't even necessary. I had to do something.

That's when I started my petition on Change.org. In just a couple weeks, more than 200,000 people signed and sent messages to Gatorade.

At first, the company didn't want to talk to me. They sent me a form letter and thanked me for my feedback. But more people signed and the media got interested. The petition got so big, it couldn't be ignored.

And then, about a week ago, during algebra class, a friend saw the big news break on Twitter: PepsiCo had announced it was taking BVO out of Gatorade for good. This was huge: Gatorade is really popular – about 70% of all sports drinks in the US are made by Gatorade.

But we can still do more: other drinks still use BVO – including Powerade, which is sold in my school. If Gatorade can switch, then so can other companies. That's why I'm asking Powerade to take the same steps Gatorade did (if you agree, sign my new petition).

So the next time you're drinking a soda or a sports drink, check your ingredients label the way I did. If you find BVO listed, you can do something about it: start a petition. It worked for this David.