Perrier recalled 160 million bottles over benzene — and Nestlé swallowed the brand

Perrier was France's most iconic mineral water — the green bottle that made sparkling water fashionable worldwide. In February 1990, a laboratory in North Carolina found traces of benzene, a carcinogen, in several bottles. Perrier's first explanation was an isolated human error: a worker who had used benzene to degrease equipment. The spring, it said, was unpolluted.

That explanation did not survive the week. On 14 February, with contaminated bottles also turning up in West Germany and the United States, president Gustave Leven announced a worldwide recall and a different cause: a gas-line filter meant to strip the benzene that occurs naturally in the spring, due for replacement every six weeks, had been left in for up to three months. 160 million bottles worth $35 million were destroyed across 120 countries, and the company was not insured for the loss. Under FDA pressure Perrier dropped its "naturally sparkling" claim that April.

Weakened by the recall and the subsequent loss of market share, Perrier became an acquisition target. In 1992, after a bidding contest with the Agnelli family, Nestlé acquired the Perrier Group. The brand that had defined premium water for a century was absorbed into the world's largest food company. Perrier still exists, but as a Nestlé product, not an independent French institution.