The FDA Just Banned These Chemicals in Food. Are They the Tip of the Iceberg?
On Monday, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) announced that it will withdraw its approval for three chemicals used to make grease, stain, and water repelling food packaging and consider banning seven food additives used in both “artificial” and “natural” flavors. While the news may have gotten lost during the first post-holiday weekday, it’s worth noting. And it raises much larger questions about one of the agencies with the most control over the safety of what we eat. Here’s what you need to know.
A Rare Response
The ban, which goes into effect in February, comes in response to a petition filed with the FDA by a handful of environmental groups, including the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), Environmental Working Group (EWG), and others. What makes it significant, says Erik Olson, health and environment program director at NRDC, is the fact that, “It is the first time the FDA has actually banned a [chemical’s] use based on a petition” and done so “based on safety information.”
But despite this unusual response on the part of an agency, the ban itself may be too little too late, say some environmental advocates.
No-stick, No Guarantee of Safety
The banned chemicals are all perfluorinated compounds (PFCs), a class of chemicals used to coat things like pizza boxes, pastry wrappers, take-out food containers, paper plates, and non-stick cookware. In other words, they’re the kind of chemical most of us might be ingesting without knowing it. PFCs have raised environmental and human health concerns because they last for a very long time in the environment and have been found in wildlife worldwide and in people—including newborns and nearly every American the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has tested.
In lab studies, PFCs have been linked to adverse effects on hormones, reproductive, developmental, neurological and immune systems, and to certain cancers. Last year, a group of more than 200 scientists from 38 countries issued a statement expressing their concern about this type of chemical and calling for policies to limit their production and use.
In its announcement this week, the FDA said the agency is taking this action because it can no longer say there is “a reasonably certainty of no harm” from use of these chemicals in food contact products. The FDA also acknowledged that it lacks adequate information about the chemicals’ migration from packaging into food itself as well as information about the chemicals’ developmental and reproductive toxicity.
While this candor on the part of the agency might be refreshing to some, Olson says it “highlights concerns we have with the whole system that has approved chemicals for these uses without fundamental data.”
And that’s not all. As EWG’s president Ken Cook said in a statement, “Industrial chemicals that pollute people’s blood clearly have no place in food packaging…But it has taken the FDA more than 10 years to figure that out, and it’s banning only three chemicals that aren’t even made anymore.”
