Shrink-wrap sealed around a piece of raw meat. Takeout containers filled with restaurant leftovers. Plastic bottles filled with soft drinks.
These are just a few types of food packaging that surround humans every day. And a new study released Monday shows the chemical toll of all that wrapping – and how it might affect the human body. Researchers from Switzerland and other countries discovered that of the roughly 14,000 known chemicals in food packaging, 3,601 – or about 25% – have been found in the human body, whether in samples of blood, hair or breast milk.
Those chemicals include metals, volatile organic compounds, per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances or PFAS, phthalates and many others known to disrupt the endocrine system and cause cancer or other diseases. The study, published in the Journal of Exposure Science and Environmental Epidemiology, didn’t directly examine the link to these illnesses. But the researchers say their inventory of chemicals can help future research into health risks.
“There are known hazardous chemicals that are known to be linked with adverse human health outcomes,” said Jane Muncke, the chief scientific officer of the Food Packaging Forum and one of the paper’s authors. “And these chemicals leach out of packaging.” Scientists have known for many years that chemicals can spill out of food packaging into the food itself.
How many chemicals – and in what quantities – depends on the type of packaging and the type of food. High .
