New Delhi, India
More than 3,600 chemicals used in food packaging or preparation have been detected in human bodies, according to a study published on Tuesday (Sep 17). Some are said to be hazardous to health, while very little is known about others.
The lead study author, Birgit Geueke from the Food Packaging Forum Foundation, said that around 100 of these chemicals are considered a high concern to human health. Some of these chemicals, like PFAS and bisphenol A, are relatively well-studied and have already been found in human bodies. Both of these chemicals have been targeted by bans.
Geueke told news agency AFP that less information is known about the health effects of other chemicals and has asked for more research into how chemicals used for packaging are being swallowed with food. The researchers had previously said there were about 14,000 food contact chemicals (FCCs) chemicals, which can migrate into the food from packaging made of paper, glass, metal, or plastic. The chemicals can also come from other parts of the preparation project, such as utensils or conveyor belts.
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The researchers searched for these chemicals in existing biomonitoring databases, and the team was expecting to find a few hundred FFCs, but they were shocked to find 3,601 – a quarter of all the existing FFCs. The lead author of the study emphasised that the research could not conclude that all these chemicals necessarily ended up in human bodies from food packaging, other exposure sources can also be responsible for this.
Bisphenol A, a hormone-disrupting chemical which is used to make plastics, was also found. The chemical in question is already banned from baby bottles in many countries.
Another chemical found is phthalates, which is linked to infertility. There is very little information about oligomers, the byproducts of plastic production. Geueke said: "There is almost no evidence on the health effects of these chemicals.”
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Limitations of the study
Geueke acknowledged that the limitation of the study was that it could not say whether there were high concentrations of any of the chemicals. However, she warned that these chemicals migrate from plastic to food, pointing to a single sample that had up to 30 different chemicals.
The study is published in the Journal of Exposure Science and Environmental Epidemiology.
(With inputs from agencies)