Considerations above chemical compounds in food packaging misplaced, say scientists

Discarded plastic bottles. Photograph: Alamy

Worries about synthetic chemicals in packaging and plastic bottles contaminating foods and drink are largely misplaced, scientists have said in response to calls for better monitoring of the prolonged-phrase effect on human well being.

Foods packaging is increasingly the subject of suspicion from some environmental scientists and campaigners. In a commentary in the Journal of Epidemiology and Local community Well being, Dr Jane Muncke, of the Foods Packaging Forum Foundation in Zurich, Switzerland, and colleagues from the US and Spain argue that lifelong publicity to such chemicals is a cause for concern.

They get in touch with for “population-primarily based evaluation and biomonitoring” to try out to figure out whether or not it is undertaking any harm. Meals get in touch with components, they say, “are a considerable supply of chemical foods contamination, although legally they are not deemed as contaminants”. They are “a new publicity supply in the sense that they have obtained small focus so far in scientific studies concerned with human well being effects,” they say.

But Muncke and colleagues came beneath heavy criticism from other scientists who explained there was little proof of danger at the really reduced levels of contamination in meals and drinks. They had been strongly rebuked for citing formaldehyde, a cancer-causing substance that is legally used in fizzy drinks bottles and melamine tableware. Critics pointed out that formaldehyde is naturally present in some foods.

“To consume as significantly formaldehyde as is present in a 100g apple, you would need to drink at least 20 litres of mineral water that had been stored in PET [polyethylene terephthalate] bottles. Naturally the concern about formaldehyde from meals packaging is significantly overrated, unless of course we are willing to area ‘potential cancer hazard’ stickers on fresh fruit and vegetables,” stated Dr Ian Musgrave, senior lecturer in the medicine faculty at the University of Adelaide.

David Coggon, professor of occupational and environmental medicine at the University of Southampton, explained: “Formaldehyde is formed naturally in the physique, for illustration from methanol that is present in fruit. As a result we should only be concerned about comparatively substantial exposures to the compound, and even then any risks will be incredibly little.

“While it is crucial to contemplate the prospective risks from endocrine disrupting chemical substances in the diet plan, and this is accomplished as part of regulatory risk evaluation for chemical compounds, a lot of of the most potent dietary endocrine disruptors are naturally happening chemical substances such as in soya.

“The post refers to feasible toxic effects from mixed exposures to numerous contaminants which individually are all at reduced ranges, but comprehending of this location of science has advanced a whole lot in the past 15 years, and there is minor to suggest that this kind of combined exposures pose a risk to overall health other than in a number of really particular circumstances.”

Nevertheless, concerns about some chemicals in foods packaging have been taken seriously in current years. Bisphenol A, an industrial chemical used to make difficult, clear plastic, and existing in a lot of bottles and metal foods and drink cans exactly where it is utilised as a lining, is to be banned from food packaging in France from 2015. Its use in the manufacture of infant feeding bottles is currently prohibited across Europe and the US.

Bisphenol A is an endocrine disruptor, a chemical that mimics the hormone oestrogen. There are fears that it could interfere with human well being and fertility. The European and US foods safety authorities say it is safe at the very low ranges located in some foods, but additional scientific studies are becoming carried out.

Professor Andy Smith, senior scientist at the MRC Toxicology Unit in Leicester, said regulators had the issue sufficiently underneath surveillance and management. “Contamination of foods by packaging is not a new concern and is currently the subject of European and other scientific studies. Many of the chemicals detected already are of this kind of low ranges that they are most likely to pose no significant chance to customers,” he mentioned.

“The authors propose widening the net to analyse so numerous chemical compounds along the food chain, and in relation to so a lot of distinct biological processes, that it is unlikely that any important causal findings would be achieved through epidemiological studies, which would require massive-scale sources. The logistical issues would be immense.”

Other individuals pointed out that packaging protects foods. “No consideration is made in this commentary of most likely advantages of the substances used in foods packaging: they stop contamination throughout managing (bacterial and viral), they avert deliberate tampering (which has been previously documented with over-the-counter medicines and in deliberate introduction of damaging agents into meals), and there is also the basic point that you have to have anything on which to print details about the foodstuff inside,” said Sir Colin Berry, emeritus professor of pathology at Queen Mary, University of London.

Considerations above chemical compounds in food packaging misplaced, say scientists