Thousands of chemicals used in food packaging and food production are leaching into food itself. “It’s [from] your soda can, your plastic cooking utensils, your nonstick frying pan, the cardboard box that your fries come in,” says Jane Muncke, a toxicologist based in Zurich. “It’s retail food packaging, but also the processing equipment, and your [kitchenware] and tableware at home.
” More than 3,600 chemicals found in food packaging are also found in human bodies, according to a paper published Tuesday in the Journal of Exposure Science & Environmental Epidemiology . The research was led by Muncke and her colleagues at the Food Packaging Forum Foundation , a nonprofit research group focused on hazardous chemicals in food packaging. The paper synthesizes data from other published sources that document the presence of certain chemicals in humans from samples of blood, urine and breast milk.
Of the 3,600 chemicals found in both food packaging and in humans, the researchers say about 80 are known to have “hazard properties of high concern” to human health. Heat and time accelerate leaching Many of the chemicals in food packaging are ingredients in plastics and can be found in clothing, furniture and personal care products. But Muncke says food packaging is a particular concern, because it can contaminate what people eat.
Food packaging can chemically react with food. You may have observed this if you’ve ever stored tomato sauce in a plastic tub and seen a reddis.