Food Packaging May be Slowly Poisoning You

Harmful chemicals from food packaging might be seeping into our foods, according to some environmental scientists.

In a commentary in the Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health, environmental scientists from around the globe are arguing that the synthetic chemicals used in the packaging and processing of our foodstuffs might be harmful to human health in the long term.

They write that this may be occurring because many of the chemical compounds used in food packaging are not inert -- their molecules do not remain still --, and can leach into the food they "protect" if given enough time.

So what's the big deal? The scientists argue that small amounts of exposure to these chemicals is perfectly safe in the short run, and very unlikely in the first place. However, as time goes on, more and more exposure to the chemicals can have subtle but adverse effects on the human body. Worse, it is a well-known fact that we are exposed to "safe" levels of potentially dangerous chemicals on a daily basis. Scientists used examples of chemicals like formaldehyde, a known cancer-causing toxin, to press their alarming point. For all its negative attributes, formaldehyde is still found in most plastic bottles, containers, and even some forms of tableware. We are constantly eating and drinking things that have been in contact with minute levels of the toxin, and are likely ingesting "harmless" levels of it daily.

The scientists admit that connecting adverse effects to lifelong exposure of harmless levels of the over 4000 toxins used in standard food packaging is a seemingly impossible task, but they still urge the scientific community and food regulators alike to pursue a deeper understanding of the relationship between the human body and these toxins.

Interestingly, there is already some knowledge on this subject, where even small levels of eleven commonly found toxins have been recently linked to inhibiting brain development in infants.

The commentary was published in the Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health on February 19.