Food packaging contains a surprisingly high number of chemicals, and even more surprisingly many of them are hazardous. A large number of more than 11'200 chemicals have been authorized for use in food packaging and other so-called food contact materials, for example conveyor belts. In addition, almost 3000 chemicals were found by chemical analysis to be mobile and move out of the food contact material when the material is in contact with food or so-called food simulants (water, oil etc.). Almost 2000 of those are not even contained in the list of 11'200 chemicals authorized for use in food contact materials but are nevertheless found in the materials; some of them are so-called Non-Intentionally Added Substances.
Now a new study published by authors of the Food Packaging Forum Foundation in Zürich, Switzerland, in the peer-reviewed Journal of Exposure Science and Environmental Epidemiology reveals the extent to which chemicals used in food packaging and other food contact articles have actually been found in human bodies (Geueke et al., https://doi.org/10.1038/s41370-024-00718-2).
“3601 chemicals found in humans by human biomonitoring are either used in the manufacture of food contact materials or present in the final articles, such as packaging and kitchenware. This represents 25% of the more than 14,000 known food contact chemicals,” says Martin Scheringer, professor of environmental chemistry at RECETOX and one of the co-authors of the study.
Much evidence exists for a few groups of chemicals, such as bisphenols, PFASs, phthalates, metals, and volatile organic compounds. They are regularly found in food contact materials and in human samples. Many of these chemicals have hazard properties of concern and have been linked to harming human health.
“For other chemicals that move from the packaging into the food, such as synthetic antioxidants and oligomers, little is known about their presence and fate in humans. Potential hazards of many of these chemicals have not been sufficiently investigated,” explains professor Scheringer.
The Food Packaging Forum Foundation has developed an interactive dashboard containing all of the data in the new study known as the FCChumon database (https://foodpackagingforum.org/fcchumon, pw: fcchumon2024). This free tool enables policymakers, public health researchers, food industry decision makers and all other stakeholders to browse and search through the data.
While there still exist other sources for many food contact chemicals, the new findings underscore the urgent need to fill knowledge gaps regarding human exposure to food contact chemicals and their potential impacts on human health. The findings suggest a significant public health concern, necessitating prioritized action to reduce human exposure to hazardous chemicals from food contact materials.
A new bioinformatic tool, BGC Atlas, was developed by a consortium of bioinformaticians. It identifies and clusters biosynthetic gene clusters from publicly available datasets, offering a centralised database and a web interface for metadata-aware exploration of BGCs and gene cluster families (GCFs).
Jan Velecký is a researcher at the RECETOX center. In the interview, he explains what protein engineering is about, why it is important to study protein solubility, and how machine learning can be crucial for human knowledge.
