Concerns over chemicals in food packaging misplaced, say scientists.
Concerns about synthetic chemicals in packaging and plastic bottles contaminating food and drink are largely misplaced, scientists have said in response to calls for greater monitoring of the long-term effect on human health.
Food packaging is increasingly the subject of suspicion from some environmental scientists and campaigners. In a commentary in the Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health, Dr Jane Muncke, of the Food Packaging Forum Foundation in Zurich, Switzerland, and colleagues from the US and Spain argue that lifelong exposure to such chemicals is a cause for concern.
They call for "population-based assessment and biomonitoring" to try to figure out whether it is doing any harm. Food contact materials, they say, "are a significant source of chemical food contamination, although legally they are not considered as contaminants". They are "a new exposure source in the sense that they have received little attention so far in studies concerned with human health effects," they say.
But Muncke and colleagues came under heavy criticism from other scientists who said there was little evidence of danger at the very low levels of contamination in food and drinks. They were 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.
http://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2014/feb/19/chemicals-food-packaging-scientists
= new reply since forum marked as read
