A new study published in the Journal of Exposure Science and Environmental Epidemiology has revealed extensive human exposure to more than 3,600 chemicals from food packaging, highlighting serious gaps in the safety monitoring and health data in the food chain indicating that stricter regulations and further research are required.
Exposure to food contact chemicals
According to the Food Packaging Forum, over 1800 food contact chemicals (FCCs) are known to migrate into food from contact articles that are used to process, package store, and serve foodstuff in the food chain. While many FCCs have hazardous properties of concern, many of them have never been tested for toxicity.
Every day we are exposed to FCCs via the food and beverages that we consume, but the full extent of the exposure to all FCCs is not known. New research from the Food Packaging Forum is trying to help fill in these gaps. They have presented a systematic evidence map of the food contact chemicals that have been monitored and detected in various sources of human samples (urine, blood, breast milk, etc.).
This study compared “over 14,000 known FCCs with data from five human biomonitoring programs, three metabolome/exposome databases, and the scientific literature to provide evidence of 3,601 FCCs present in humans, representing 25% of the known FCCs.”
The review revealed the widespread presence of FCCs in humans, and for 25% of the known FCCs evidence was found of their presence in humans, such as chemicals with hazardous properties like PFAS (per and polyfluoroalkyl substances), bisphenols, and phthalates. Additionally, the study showed that many of these chemicals have not been investigated sufficiently, and the number of food contact chemicals present is higher than detected because only a subset of the food contact chemicals was examined in detail.
Link to human health
“Our research establishes a link between food contact chemicals, exposure, and human health. It also highlights those chemicals that have been overlooked in biomonitoring studies so far. And it offers an important opportunity for prevention and protection of health,” said Dr. Birgit Geueke, first author of the study.
“This work highlights the fact that food contact materials are not fully safe, even though they may comply with regulations, because they transfer known hazardous chemicals into people. We would like this new evidence base to be used for improving the safety of food contact materials – both in terms of regulations but also in the development of safer alternatives,” said Dr. Jane Muncke, senior author.
Knowledge is scarce
“Our study highlights that antioxidants, despite their high production volumes and widespread use in plastics, are largely absent from monitoring programs. The knowledge about metabolism, fate, and effects of these substances is generally scarce,” said Dr. Ksenia Groh from the Swiss Federal Institute of Aquatic Science and Technology.
“There are surprisingly many hazardous chemicals used in food contact materials, and they do not just stay there, but quite some of them reach, to some extent, the human body. This is concerning, and there clearly is a need for safer and simpler food contact materials,” said Prof. Dr. Martin Scheringer, co-author from ETH Zürich.
Problematic packaging
“We already knew that problematic chemicals in food packaging are not limited to well-known substances such as bisphenol and phthalates, but we were surprised by the high number of food contact chemicals for which some evidence of human exposure exists. This shows that there needs to be more research about the toxicity and exposure to many chemicals and regulations around their use in food packaging,” concluded co-author Olwenn Martin from the University College of London.
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References/Sources/Materials provided by:
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41370-024-00718-2
https://www.foodpackagingforum.org
https://www.foodpackagingforum.org/news/new-fpf-study-and-database-food-contact-chemicals-in-humans
https://worldhealth.net/news/teas-processed-meats-and-food-packaging-contaminated-pfas/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7053054
https://worldhealth.net/news/are-plastic-bottles-and-packaged-foods-poisoning-your-arteries-yes/
https://worldhealth.net/news/study-links-high-cholesterol-cardiovascular-disease-plastics/
