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The smell of warm, freshly brewed coffee is pleasant to those who drink it. But for those who roast it, inhaling it can be life threatening, reports the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. Roasting coffee beans releases a chemical compound diacetyl which is found naturally in butter and beer, and is artificially made and added as a flavoring to other products and has been shown to damage airways in the lungs and cause sometimes fatal lung disease. The newspaper sampled air at two Wisconsin and found diacetyl levels exceeding safety standards proposed by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
From the story:
“Both [roasteries] operate out of spacious and clean facilities with industrial exhaust systems on the roasting equipment…. ‘If under these … circumstances we've got these concentrations, think of a sweatshop where they're roasting 100 times this amount …’ said Eugene Ruenger, the industrial hygienist who conducted the sampling.
Read the full story here.