Merely the tip of the iceberg

All of us know that packaging plays a key role in our globalised food market. In fact, there are many cases where packaging is indispensable because it allows food to be kept for longer and transported over long distances. Equally, however, we have known for a considerable time that packaging can also be an important source of chemicals that migrate from it into food.

The effects of these substances – known as food contact chemicals (or FCCs) – have been the subject of numerous scientific studies over the last half-century. And there is even clear evidence to prove that at least a small number of these FCCs have a negative influence on human health.

Focusing on how FCCs impact health

To take just one example: a study recently published by European scientists shows that at least 29 chemicals – including bisphenols and phthalates – used in a wide variety of packaging types present significant risk factors for reduced spermquality, as well as other negative effects. This study shows “alarming exceedances of acceptable combined exposures” to various synthetic chemicals which people encounter in their everyday lives from many different sources – including food packaging. Considering only the nine chemicals monitored in urine, “acceptable exposures” to chemicals of particular concern were exceeded by 17-fold. In highly exposed males, the index value was even exceeded by more than 100-fold.

Results of this sort are all the more alarming in view of the dramatic negative trend in fertility that has already been documented among the male population for several decades. This is why scientists are calling on the authorities to act quickly – and in particular, to impose a ban on bisphenol A (BPA) in materials that come into contact with food.

Study reveals major gaps in knowledge

However, this could merely be the tip of the iceberg – as shown by another recently published international study on which I myself collaborated actively. This work aimed to produce a systematic overview of all chemicals that have ever been measured in food contact materials, including their packaging. The Database on Migrating and Extractable Food Contact Chemicals (FCCmigex) contains information from a total of 1,210 studies. 

The results are astonishing: we discovered that all in all, 2,881 FCCs have thus far been detected in a total of six groups of food contact materials (FCMs) – including plastics, paper and board, metals, multi-materials (such as beverage cartons), glass and ceramic materials. But the most surprising finding was that until now, about 65% of these chemicals had been completely unknown as substances used in food contact materials. Our results show that at least 14,153 chemicals are used in packaging for food and also in processing equipment and storage containers, etc. The most disconcerting aspect of this result is that we know practically nothing about the way many of these FCCs impact human health. We do not know how harmful they are when small quantities of them are ingested with food on a daily basis, nor whether they remain permanently in our bodies, nor yet how they interact with one another when they migrate in mixtures from packaging into food. This came as a surprise to me, because we really do assume that the authorities are keeping a close watch on this. In actual fact, however, this is not the case – and chemicals in food packaging are largely uncontrolled.

Another noteworthy aspect was the distribution of FCCs across the various material groups. It is not altogether surprising, for instance, that a disproportionately large majority of the FCCs was detected in FCMs made of plastic, while glass and ceramics had by far the smallest number of measured FCCs (see the chart below). This has to do with the fact that plastics are synthetic – that is to say, human-made materials that consist of very many different synthetic chemicals, some of which are in fact completely unknown. Plastics, therefore, are highly complex materials. Glass and ceramics, on the other hand, are very simple in comparison: they are made from a small number of raw materials, so they are very well characterised. No unknown substances occur in these materials. 

In overall terms, our results underscore the urgent need to investigate and document the effects of FCCs in more detail – and this should have been done even before they were utilised on a large scale, as they already are today. However, this is an enormously time-consuming and resource-intensive task because of the large number of chemicals that require better investigation. For these reasons, it is important to restrict the use of FCCs and only to use materials that have been properly investigated and found to be harmless – such as glass and ceramic materials or stainless steel, whose chemical compositions are precisely known and from which few if any chemicals migrate into food.