Over 3,600 carcinogenic chemicals used in most food packaging ends up leaking in food, according to a new FDA approved study.
Scientists previously catalogued 14,000 food-contact chemicals (FCCs), all of which are capable of migrating into food from packaging made from a wide variety of materials, including plastic, paper, glass and metal.
Infowars.com reports: In their new study, the researchers looked for these chemicals in existing biomonitoring databases around the world, which catalogue chemicals found in human samples.
The researchers expected to find hundreds of chemicals in the databases, but instead they found 3,601, a full quarter of all known FCCs.
Around 100 of these chemicals are already known to be of “high concern” because of studies establishing their toxicity—chemicals such as per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS), bisphenol A and phthalates—but the rest have little to no data establishing their risks to human health.
The truth is that nobody knows the precise number of food additives in use in the US, because manufacturers, thanks to the FDA's insane GRAS system, can decide unilaterally that a new additive is safe and add it to their products, without any independent testing. https://t.co/l3cKhOtBAC
— RAW EGG NATIONALIST (@Babygravy9) September 14, 2024
In response to the new study, health advocates have pointed to the current system for chemical regulation in the US as one of the main reasons so many chemicals are ending up in food packaging and, ultimately, in our bodies.
“Some have never been reviewed by the FDA at all because food and chemical companies are exploiting a loophole that lets them, rather than the FDA, decide whether a chemical is safe,” said Melanie Benesh, vice president for government affairs at the Environmental Working Group, one of several nonprofit organizations that have repeatedly petitioned the agency to ban toxic substances in food and packaging.
“It’s no surprise that consumer confidence in food chemical safety is falling.”
The FDA is now vowing to change its review processes for new food chemicals and to conduct reviews of chemicals already on the market. However, representatives of the agency have said current funding levels need to be increased significantly.
Jim Jones, the FDA’s first-ever deputy commissioner for human foods, said that the FDA needs “a systematic approach for chemical reassessment.”
Reforming the FDA and other regulatory agencies is a central plank of Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s “Make American Healthy Again” agenda, which he has allied with Donald Trump in an effort to pursue, after finding the Democrat Party unreceptive to his suggestions.
