Energy drink photobleaching

I wrote quite some time ago about my interest in grenade-shaped energy drink Bomba as a cultural artifact. I bought the inner two bottles, shown above, in early 2009. Each is displayed next to a promotional photo of the same flavor; to left, “ruby orange,” and to right, “original.” My bottles are dated “best before 05.22.09” and “best before 09.07.09,” respectively.

Part of the Bomba gimmick is the “pin” on the bottle cap, so I never opened the bottles in order to preserve the effect. I displayed them, over the intervening years, with other bottles and knick-knacks in a windowsill. “Ruby orange,” left, has been bleached almost water-white, I presume by sunlight. Since the drink is so far past its expiration date, it is, I suppose, possible that some kind of very slow solution-phase bleaching process is responsible. But evident photobleaching of the inks on the paper labels on the outside of the bottles (as well as notable bleaching of other dyed solutions displayed in the same windows) strongly suggests that photochemistry is the culprit.

“Ruby orange” lists FD&C Red #40 on the label, whereas the apparently unaffected color of “original” Bomba, to right, lists “artificial color (caramel color)” in place of the red dye.

Galilean thermometer photobleaching

My brother bought me this Galileo thermometer (Wikipedia) as a Xmas gift in 2008. Out of the box, it looked very like the manufacturer photo shown at extreme left. The near-left picture was taken just today.

Over the intervening three years, it has been displayed continuously in one window or another, windowsills being not only useful locations to observe the temperature, but good places to show off the strikingly beautiful colors of the instrument. It was only a month ago that I noticed the blues and greens had faded away. I have noticed a similar effect in a pair of full bottles of Bomba energy drink that have also been kept in the sun (and for about the same length of time): the red is still red, while the blue has faded away. ( Update: My memory of these bottles’ original colors was flawed. See this post.)

It’s likely the soda, at least, is dyed with Brilliant Blue FCF, aka Blue 1 (Wikipedia), and I wonder whether the Chinese-made Galileo thermometer also might have used the food-grade dye. It would be a sensible choice, for a manufacturer; with US consumption estimated at a million pounds a year, Blue 1 is dirt cheap, and obviously nontoxic, which the underwriters probably favor against the chance of an accident in which the thermometer breaks and the stuff gets into a human orifice or wound.