That’s what some Mexican consumer rights groups are saying. Coca-Cola is using a potentially carcinogenic — and banned in the U.S. since the late 60s — sweetener for its Coca-Cola Zero product in Mexico.

Sodium cyclamate, which is 30 times sweeter than sucrose and prized because it lacks a strong aftertaste, was outlawed by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration 38 years ago over cancer concerns. It was legalized in Mexico last year, shortly before Coca-Cola launched the Mexican version of Coca-Cola Zero, the soda giant’s latest diet drink.Mp>

Recent U.S. and European studies have downplayed sodium cyclamate’s role as a carcinogen and suggested that it is safe in low doses. The sweetener is now legal in more than 50 countries, including Canada and the European Union nations.

But the Washington, D.C.-based nonprofit Center for Science in the Public Interest, a frequent critic of Coke, warns people to avoid the sweetener because it can “increase the potency of other carcinogens and harm the testes.”

I guess for Coke, it’s okay to put Mexican lives in danger. This is obviously terrible behavior by the company (whose Mexican spokesperson says that sodium cyclamate is “undoubtedly safe”) but what of the Mexican government’s allowing Coke do this? According to the Atlanta Journal Constitution, many advocacy groups speculate that Coke’s managing to get sodium cyclamate approved in 1996 has everything to do with the power the multi-national company had over former president Vicente Fox.

Via / Atlanta Journal Constitution