Scientists have proposed a new scheme which will better identify the chemicals used in the food sector and the potential risks they pose.

The team from the Food Packaging Forum Foundation said they have created a practical, novel, and scalable approach to better protect consumer health.

By grouping the more than 15,000 chemicals that can be used or found in food packaging, kitchenware, or other food contact materials, chemicals can be prioritized for regulatory review or phase out. This new approach will support the prevention of regrettable substitutions.

They added current food contact material regulations in Europe and North America do not sufficiently protect consumers’ health because 87% of chemicals lack adequate safety data to consider the wide range of health impacts that can occur.

Until these food contact chemicals can be properly tested and the missing data are made available, the study’s authors propose using a grouping approach to efficiently prioritize potentially hazardous chemicals based on their chemical structure. Phase-outs, legal restrictions, or prioritized testing based on this grouping approach could help policymakers and manufacturers overcome the problematic data gaps and better protect human and environmental health.

Dr. Helene Wiesinger, co-author, Food Packaging Forum Foundation said: “There are many known hazardous chemicals in food packaging, but replacing them with very similar chemicals that have not been sufficiently tested is not solving the problem. Based on already known hazardous chemicals, we have identified 38 priority chemicals groups, and we developed a method to quickly identify them within any set of chemicals. This can help policymakers and manufacturers to quickly spot potential chemicals of concern and take appropriate action.”

The key findings included:

• Major data gaps exist for the majority of chemicals. 1,222 food contact chemicals are already known to be hazardous for human health, but more than 13,000 lack sufficient publicly available data to determine whether or not they are safe for consumers.
• There are 38 priority chemical groups to address. These groups have a high share of known hazardous chemicals and include ortho-phthalates, PFASs, alkyl phenols, organophosphates, isocyanates, primary aromatic amines, and others.
• Grouping chemicals can help prevent regrettable substitutions. There are 3,547 food contact chemicals within these 38 priority groups. This means they are structurally similar to known hazardous chemicals and therefore could become regrettable substitutes.
• Grouping chemicals can better protect consumers sooner. Current food contact regulations look at chemicals one-by-one, which is inefficient and ineffective given the major data gaps for important health endpoints. Using a group-based approach to address major data gaps can reduce the number of regulatory processes needed and ultimately better protect consumer health sooner.

The study included a publicly available and evidence-based list of known hazardous chemicals in FCMs (FCCprio List) as well as an interactive application (FCCgroup, password: fccgroup2026) to help users easily identify whether a chemical belongs to one of the 38 priority groups.

Based on publicly available hazard data, the chemicals on the FCCprio List could be considered for more restricted use in food contact applications. Given the current lack of necessary data, chemicals within an FCCgroup priority group(s) could be reevaluated for their safety and should not be used as drop-in alternatives for known hazardous chemicals—a practice that is known as regrettable substitution and that has occurred for chemicals such as bisphenol A (replaced by bisphenol F).

Dr. Jane Muncke, co-author,  from the Food Packaging Forum Foundation explained:   “Our research shows just how little is known about so many of the chemicals consumers are exposed to everyday through the food packaging they buy. Today’s regulatory approaches in Europe and North America look at each chemical individually, but this is inefficient and does not sufficiently protect consumers. We are proposing an evidence-based grouping approach decision makers can already use now until the proper testing methods and testing data become available.”