Fig 1.
Schematic illustration of chemical migration from plastic food packaging into food.
Small molecules that are present in the plastic packaging item (red dots) can transfer out of the plastic into the food. The same is true for small molecules present in the food (yellow dot), a process known as flavor scalping. Also, environmental contaminants (blue dots) can be absorbed in the plastic packaging and subsequently be released again, making this an issue for plastics recycling. Chemical migration, flavor scalping, and absorption depend on temperature, time, and the chemical properties of the packaging, the food and the chemicals that are transferring from one medium to another. Created with BioRender.com.
Fig 2.
Chemical migration from packaging into food—the status quo.
Chemicals migrate from plastic packaging into food, and some of the migrating chemicals are known to be hazardous. Chronic exposure to certain hazardous chemicals is associated with avoidable chronic disease. This means that reducing exposure to hazardous chemicals from plastic food packaging contributes to disease prevention. Unknown or untested chemicals that migrate into food must also be addressed, as they may include hazardous chemicals.
Fig 3.
The 3 key areas for improving the chemical safety of food packaging, based on current knowledge: (A) expanding hazard assessment to include other relevant toxicities; (B) systematically assessing migrating chemicals for their ability to disrupt the endocrine system by using appropriate testing that allow for identification of non-monotonic dose responses; (C) tackling mixture toxicity to identify toxic effects of all chemicals migrating simultaneously.
Fig 4.
Schematic overview of the human and environmental health impacts of the plastics life cycle.
Adapted and reprinted with permission from the Health and Environment Alliance [67].
Fig 5.
Robustly improving food packaging requires consideration of numerous aspects to achieve systemic change that does not result in the creation of new wicked problems.