Food regulation and industrial exposure controls therefore cannot be treated as interchangeable. Evidence of harm in one exposure setting does not supply a measured risk for a different dose and route. Equally, permission to use a processing aid should not prevent scrutiny of the evidence or demands for clearer product information.
There is a real policy debate
The Environmental Defense Fund and other organisations petitioned the FDA in January 2024 to remove permissions for several chemicals, including methylene chloride, from food uses. That is a documented advocacy position. A petition is not itself a ban, and consumers should not be told that it is.
What water processing changes
A different processing method is available. Swiss Water describes its process as using green coffee extract to draw caffeine out of beans and carbon filtration to remove that caffeine from the extract. Its description explains its own method; it does not establish that every competing coffee is unsafe or that every water-processed product tastes better.
There is another distinction worth keeping: decaf does not mean zero caffeine. The FDA’s consumer guidance gives a typical range of 2–15 milligrams of caffeine in an eight-fluid-ounce cup of decaf coffee.
