Chemicals contained in food and drink contact materials can be transferred to the food and drink, and legislation specifically regulating genotoxic carcinogens exists to protect citizens from chemicals that pose a health risk. Since cancer is one of the few health problems directly considered in the regulation and testing of these materials, carcinogenic substances in packaging and other food contact materials should not be common.
However, researchers from the Food Packaging Forum, a non-profit scientific foundation based in Zurich, have carried out a new study in which they have identified 189 substances that are or could be breast carcinogens, which have been detected in commercially available food contact materials. Their findings have just been published in Frontiers in Toxicology.
“This study shows that there is a major opportunity to prevent human exposure to chemicals that cause breast cancer,” said Jane Muncke, director of the Food Packaging Forum and co-author of the study. “The potential to prevent cancer by reducing the presence of hazardous chemicals in our daily lives has been underexplored and deserves much more attention.”
143 potential breast carcinogens were found in plastics
Comparing a recently published list of potential breast carcinogens compiled by scientists at the Silent Spring Institute (previously reported on by FPF) with the Food Packaging Forum database of food contact chemicals (FCCmigex), the authors found that 189 confirmed and potential breast carcinogens have been detected in these materials, including 143 in plastics and 89 in paper or cardboard.
“The identification of these hazardous chemicals in food contact materials was made possible by our FCCmigex database,” said Lindsey Parkinson, data scientist and scientific editor at Food Packaging Forum and co-author of the study. “This resource brings together valuable information from thousands of published scientific studies on chemicals in food contact materials in one easy-to-access location.”
“Chronic exposure of the entire population to potential breast carcinogens present in these materials is the norm and highlights an important, but underappreciated, opportunity for prevention.”
Limiting the comparison to the most recent studies in FCCmigex (2020-2022), which employed migration experiments simulating realistic conditions, evidence of exposure to 76 confirmed and potential breast carcinogens was found in these materials, of which 61 (80%) were from plastics.
In total, the 76 newly detected potential and confirmed breast carcinogens were found in food contact materials purchased in markets around the world, including Brazil, Canada, China, Ghana, Egypt, the European Union (Austria, Denmark, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Poland, Spain), India, Iran, Malaysia, Mexico, Nigeria, Syria, Turkey and the United States. This indicates continued exposure of the global population to these substances under realistic conditions of use.
Despite the existence of regulations designed to limit carcinogenic substances in food contact materials, the study highlights shortcomings in current regulatory frameworks. The food contact items were purchased in recent years in markets in highly regulated regions, such as the European Union and the United States. “Our findings suggest that chronic population-wide exposure to potential breast carcinogens in these materials is the norm and highlights an important, but under-appreciated, opportunity for prevention,” the authors concluded.
