News
The Food Packaging Forum reports on recent developments across the food packaging and health field.
January 18, 2022
Researchers from several European and Chinese institutions develop methods to explore chemicals in food contact materials (FCMs); report styrene migration from different polystyrene FCMs into several food matrices; detect photoinitiators in paper FCMs and chlorinated paraffins in green tea and its packaging; find irradiation treatment of metalized polypropylene to reduce migration of tested chemicals
Reading time: 7 minutes
January 17, 2022
European Chemicals Agency (ECHA) adds four chemicals to the Candidate List of substances of very high concern (SVHC); two of the substances are known to be used in food contact applications; obligates producers and suppliers to provide safety information and to notify ECHA
Reading time: 1 minute
January 13, 2022
Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) releases report outlining the goals, considerations, and trade-offs when designing a more ‘sustainable’ plastic product; encourages transparency in chemical composition and manufacturing processes through the supply chain
Reading time: 2 minutes
January 12, 2022
Letter from the US House Oversight and Reform Committee to the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) asks what steps FDA is taking to evaluate human health effects from, or to ban, phthalates in food packaging and processing materials
Reading time: 1 minute
January 12, 2022
Ghana National Plastic Action Partnership publishes roadmap to reduce plastic use and pollution in the country; includes 11 case studies of projects already underway; outlines strategies for both public and private institutions to contribute to the vision
Reading time: 2 minutes
January 11, 2022
Two studies applied computational methods to screen food contact chemicals (FCCs) for carcinogenic properties or interaction with 31 nuclear receptors; one identifies 44 potential carcinogens among 1623 assessed FCCs; other finds more than half of 8091 screened FCCs with high binding affinity for several nuclear receptors
Topics: endocrine disruptor, risk assessment
Reading time: 3 minutes
January 11, 2022
Council of the EU announces member states endorsement of recently completed negotiations on the 8th Environmental Action Program (EAP); EAP will guide EU climate and environmental policy until 2030; priority objectives include decreasing the EU’s material and consumption footprints
Reading time: 2 minutes
January 7, 2022
Final version of European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) guidance prioritizes hazard-driven criteria for grouping chemicals; supports human health risk assessments of combined chemical exposures; recommends relying on mechanistic information on toxicity within a weight-of-evidence approach
Reading time: 1 minute
January 5, 2022
US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) publishes updated draft protocol to select scientific studies used within Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA) risk evaluations; replaces 2018 approach and open for public comment; public peer review meeting set for April 19-21, 2022
Reading time: 0 minutes
January 5, 2022
Recorded webinar from European Chemicals Agency (ECHA) presents the agency’s work on assessing regulatory needs of groups of chemicals; provides overview of recently published reports
Reading time: 0 minutes
