Three grease-resistant chemicals linked to cancer and birth defects that are used in pizza boxes, microwave popcorn bags, sandwich wrappers, and other food packaging are being banned by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.
The chemicals banned by the FDA, in an order that takes effect immediately, are three perfluorinated compounds or PFCs, a class that includes the chemicals used to make DuPont’s Teflon and 3M’s Scotchgard.
Through their use in thousands of consumer products, PFCs have polluted the blood of virtually all Americans, said the Environmental Working Group. They can be passed through the umbilical cord to the fetus. They contaminate drinking water for more than 6.5 million people in 27 states, according to water tests conducted by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.
The FDA’s action comes more than a decade after the EWG and other groups questioned their use and five years after U.S. chemical companies stopped making them. It does nothing to prevent food processors and packagers from using almost 100 related chemicals that may also be hazardous, said the EWG.
“Industrial chemicals that pollute people’s blood clearly have no place in food packaging,” said EWG President Ken Cook. “But it’s taken the FDA more than 10 years to figure that out, and it’s banning only three chemicals that aren’t even made any more.”
“This is another egregious example of how, all too often, regulatory actions under the nation’s broken chemical laws are too little and too late to protect Americans’ health,” Cook said. “Congress needs to ensure that chemicals that make their way into food, either as deliberate additives or as contaminants from packaging and other outside sources, are thoroughly investigated.”
In 2005, former DuPont engineer Glen Evers revealed that for decades, DuPont had hidden its use of a PFC-based coating in paper food packaging, despite evidence that PFCs were harmful to human health. Following Evers’ disclosures, the EWG wrote to the leaders of fast-food companies asking them to disclose whether their companies used PFCs in food wrappers. Burger King and some other companies said they would stop using wrappers with certain PFCs.
Meanwhile, in 2005, the EPA made voluntary agreements with DuPont, 3M, and other chemical companies to phase out production and use of some PFCs. But because the EPA regulates chemicals in consumer products while the FDA has authority over chemicals in food, the EPA phaseout didn’t remove the compounds from the FDA’s list of substances approved for contact with food.
Over the past decade, chemical companies have introduced dozens of chemicals similar to those phased out under the EPA-led deal. The FDA has approved almost 100 other PFC compounds for use in food packaging.
In 2008, EWG investigated FDA safety assessments and approvals for those next-generation PFCs and concluded that the agency failed to give adequate attention to the long-term health consequences of exposure to those substances. Since then, the FDA has approved 20 more PFC chemicals for use in food wrappers. Public information on the safety of these substances is largely non-existent, the EWG said.
“We know very little about the safety of these next-generation PFCs in food wrappers,” said David Andrews, senior scientist for the EWG, who analyzed the more recent FDA approvals.
The FDA ban comes in response to a petition filed by the Natural Resources Defense Council, the Center for Food Safety, the Breast Cancer Fund, the Center for Environmental Health, Clean Water Action, the Center for Science in the Public Interest, Children’s Environmental Health Network, Improving Kids’ Environment and the EWG.
