The two products the suit specifically is addressing are Polar Diet Orange Dry and In Zone's 'Bellywasher' containing '2/3 less Sugar.' In the lab tests, the suit said, the 'Bellywashers' drink had a benzene level 14 times higher than the limit on drinking water and the Polar beverage was almost twice as high. The lawsuit notes that the products are marketed towards children and even come in a bottle that is shaped like Spiderman, Hello Kitty, Scooby Doo and dozens of other well-known characters.

In the lawsuits, filed with Suffolk Superior Court in Boston and Leon County Circuit Court in Tallahassee, Florida, the plaintiffs ask the companies to pull their products from store shelves and be ordered to stop selling products with a 'tendency to contain benzene,' and that they relinquish any profits from those sales and that they pay the plaintiffs' costs.

'It's impossible for parents to know which soft drinks are safe and which contain cancer-causing benzene,' lead plaintiff Timothy Newell said in a statement.

It is possible to make soft drinks without using benzene. The plaintiffs are hoping that companies will not include benzene in their products in the future.

The Food and Drug Administration has tested soft drinks to see if they are safe but the results of the tests have yet to be announced. As of now, the FDA and the soft drink manufacturers say the products are safe for human consumption.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency considers 5 pbb of benzene as the maximum safe level in tap water. Benzene is a known carcinogenic substance associated with an increased risk of acute myeloid leukemia, chronic lymphocytic leukemia and other cancers. Increasingly, evidence is suggesting that benzene may form when beverages containing vitamin C, or ascorbic acid, and the preservatives sodium benzoate and/or potassium benzoate combine when the beverages are stored warm over prolonged periods.

The Environmental Working Group ("EWG) found information from a food safety study done by the FDA that showed that 19 of 24, or 79%, of diet soda samples tested over a period of six years from 1995 through 2001 contained benzene levels above 5 ppb. The average benzene level was in fact 19 pbb, nearly four times the standard for tap water, and the maximum detected level was 55 ppb, or eleven times the tap water standard. Confronted with this evidence, EWG representatives acknowledged the studies but says the findings are not a public health concern.

In addition to the two soft drinks listed above, other soft drinks are reported as having higher levels of benzene, including, Diet Pepsi Wild Cherry, Fanta Orange, Hawaiian Punch, Mug Root Beer, Pepsi Vanilla, Sierra Mist, Sunkist and Tropicana Lemonade.