Study Identifies 175 “Chemicals of Concern” in Food Contact Materials

A study published this week by researchers associated with the Zurich,
Switzerland-based Food Packaging Forum has sounded the alarm about the
number of allegedly hazardous substances contained in food packaging or
those that may contaminate food during production, processing, storage and
transportation. Birgit Geueke, et al., “Food contact substances and chemicals
of concern: a comparison of inventories,” Food Additives & Contaminants:
Part A, published online July 7, 2014.

The researchers reportedly compared the inventories of three food contact
material (FCM) databases—the Pew Charitable Trusts’ list of legal direct
and indirect food additives, the EU-wide positive list for plastic FCMs and
the European Food Standard Authority’s 2011 non-plastics FCM substances
list—with the Substitute It Now! (SIN) list 2.1 and the TEDX database of
endocrine-disrupting chemicals. Ultimately identifying 175 substances “with
hazardous properties,” they found “(1) gaps in the regulation of FCMs and (2)
how knowledge from different authorities and organizations could be used to
increase chemical safety with the objective of improving public health.”

“From a consumer perspective, it is certainly undesirable and also unexpected
to find chemicals of concern being intentionally used in food contact materials,
and thus it seems appropriate to replace substances case by case with
inherently safer alternatives,” the study concludes.

Issue 529