On December 10, 2025, Systemiq released “Invisible Ingredients – Tackling toxic chemicals in the food system.” The report, which includes contributions from Food Packaging Forum Chief Scientific Officer Dr. Jane Muncke, assesses the human health and environmental impacts of four major chemical groups – synthetic pesticides, bisphenols, phthalates, and per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS), based on their prevalence throughout the food system and their documented hazards.
The report highlights that toxic chemicals with known adverse human health and environmental effects are found throughout food systems due to the use of fertilizers, pesticides, food processing equipment, packaging, and coatings. At the heart of the problem, the authors cite insufficiently regulated chemicals that are known to be hazardous along with inadequate testing for many other chemicals, leaving large blind spots.
Focusing on the four major chemical groups described above and their presence in the food system, the authors estimate a total of 3 trillion USD annually in preventable costs, including 1.4-2.2 trillion USD in annual healthcare costs and 640 billion USD in annual ecological damage, and 200-700 million fewer births globally over the next 75 years. The authors argue that the benefits of taking global action vastly outweigh the costs, resulting in health and ecological savings of 1.9 trillion USD per year.
Moving forward, the report presents three key measures to move towards safer chemicals in the food system and reduced impacts on health and the environment:
- Stop the use of chemicals that are known to be harmful by banning and phasing out hazardous chemicals, strengthening enforcement, prohibiting their production and export, and strengthening liability frameworks
- Prevent toxic chemicals from reaching people and ecosystems by adopting precautionary hazard-based regulations, requiring pre-market proof of safety, surveilling post-market for unforeseen harms, and applying systematic review methods
- Realign incentives and redesign systems by reforming fiscal and regulatory incentives to reward lower toxicity, funding innovation, driving product and system redesign to eliminate unnecessary chemical use, and embedding hazard literacy and safe-by-design principles in STEM education and industry training
Reference
Systemiq (December 10, 2025). “Invisible Ingredients – Tackling toxic chemicals in the food system.”
