Banned in other countries, little-known ingredient sparking
renewed concerns by Brett Israel for iWatch news MARIETTA, Ga. —
It’s Monday night at the Battle & Brew, a gamer hangout in this
Atlanta suburb. The crowd is slumping in chairs, ears entombed
in headphones, eyes locked on flat-screen monitors and minds
lost in tonight’s video game of choice: “The Elder Scrolls V:
Skyrim.” To help stay alert all night, each man has an open can
of “gamer fuel” inches from his keyboard. “I’ve seen some of
these dudes plow through six sodas in six hours,” said Brian
Smawley, a regular at the gamer bar. Gamers say they chug their
fuel for the sugar and caffeine, but drinkers of Mountain Dew
and some other citrus-flavored drinks are also getting a dose of
a synthetic chemical called brominated vegetable oil, or BVO.
Patented by chemical companies as a flame retardant, and banned
in food throughout Europe and Japan, BVO has been added to sodas
for decades in North America. Now some scientists have a renewed
interest in this