World Health Organization Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus. File photograph
| Photo Credit: Reuters

WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus on Friday, September 20, 2024, highlighted the critical role of food regulators in combating unsafe food, which causes 600 million cases of foodborne diseases and 4,20,000 deaths annually.

In a video message to the second Global Food Regulators Summit in Delhi, Ghebreyesus said, “Our food systems are facing increasing challenges due to climate change, population growth, new technologies, globalisation and industrialisation.” He said that 70 per cent of fatalities from unsafe food occur among children under five.

“The food regulator community has a critical role to play in addressing these global challenges,” the WHO Chief said, emphasising the need for coordinated efforts as over 3 million people cannot afford a nutritious diet.

Ghebreyesus stressed that collaboration was essential to ensure safe and accessible food for all, as food systems cross borders and continents.

Union Health Minister J P Nadda, Food Minister Prahlad Joshi, Health Secretary and Food Safety and Standards Authority of India (FSSA) Chairperson Apurva Chandra, Codex Chairperson Steve Wearne and FSSAI CEO G Kamala Vardhana Rao attended the event.

File photograph used for representational purposes only
| Photo Credit: AFP

More than 3,600 chemicals used in food packaging or preparation have been detected in human bodies, some of which are hazardous to health, while little is known about others, a study published on Tuesday, September 17, 2024, said.

Around 100 of these chemicals are considered to be of “high concern” to human health, said lead study author Birgit Geueke from the Food Packaging Forum Foundation, a Zurich-based NGO.

Some of these chemicals are relatively well-studied and have already been found in human bodies, such as PFAS and bisphenol A — both of which are the target of bans.

But little is known about the health effects of others, Geueke told AFP, calling for more research into how chemicals used in packaging end up being swallowed along with food.

The researchers had previously catalogued around 14,000 food contact chemicals (FCCs), which are capable of “migrating” into food from packaging made of plastic, paper, glass, metal or other materials.

They can also come from other parts of the food-making process, such as from conveyer belts or kitchen utensils.

The researchers then searched for these chemicals in existing biomonitoring databases, which track chemicals in human samples.

The team was expecting to find a few hundred FCCs, Geueke said. Instead, they were surprised to find 3,601 — a quarter of all the known FCCs.

Geueke emphasised that this study could not show that all these chemicals necessarily ended up in bodies from food packaging, as “other exposure sources are possible”.

Among the “high concern” chemicals were numerous PFAS, also known as forever chemicals, which have been detected in many parts of the human body in recent years and linked to a range of health problems.

Also detected was bisphenol A, a hormone-disrupting chemical used to make plastics that has already been banned from baby bottles in many countries. Another hormone-disrupting chemical was phthalates, which has been linked to infertility.

Less is known about oligomers, which are also byproducts of plastic production. “There is almost no evidence on the health effects of these chemicals,” Geueke said.

Reduce contact with packaging

When it comes to toxicology, an old saying is that “the dose makes the poison”.

A limitation of the study was that it could not say whether there were particularly high concentrations of any of the chemicals, Geueke acknowledged.

But she warned that these chemicals can interact with each other, pointing to a single sample that had up to 30 different PFAS.

Geueke recommended that people reduce their contact time with packaging — and avoid heating up food in the packaging it came in.

Duane Mellor, an expert in evidence-based medicine at the UK’s Aston University and not involved in the research, praised the “very thorough piece of work”.

“However, it does not cover how much of these chemicals we are exposed to and hints at other sources of these chemicals in our environment,” he told AFP.

Rather than being “unduly alarmed”, Mellor suggested that people “demand better data and minimise unnecessary exposure to chemicals which may ultimately impact our health”.

Some of the chemicals are also already facing bans.

The European Union is in the final stages of banning the use of PFAS in food packaging. The EU has also proposed a similar ban for bisphenol A from the end of this year.

The study was published in the Journal of Exposure Science and Environmental Epidemiology.

Beijing:

Revelations that cooking oil has been transported in containers also used to carry fuel have sparked outrage in China, the latest scandal in a country where fears about food safety are widespread.

Local state-backed outlet the Beijing News last week published an investigation into what it called an “open secret” in the transportation industry.

The outlet found that several tanker trucks had transported edible cooking oil immediately after unloading coal oil, with no cleaning process in between journeys.

Truck drivers told the newspaper the practice helped to cut costs in the face of increasing competition.

The outlet also quoted food science expert Zhu Yi as saying that long-term consumption of coal oil, which consists mainly of hydrocarbons, could lead to poisoning.

Authorities have vowed to crack down, with the central government announcing Tuesday that it would launch an investigation.

Beijing has in recent years pledged to do much more to tighten food safety regulations and strengthen public trust.

The Chinese public is no stranger to scandals around food safety.

Milk adulterated with the chemical melamine killed six infants and poisoned hundreds of thousands of children in 2008.

In 2022, Chinese pork-processing giant Henan Shuanghui apologised after unhygienic work practices such as packaging meat that had dropped on the floor and workers wearing dirty uniforms were exposed.

And last year, top beermaker Tsingtao opened an investigation after a video that appeared to show a factory employee urinating on raw ingredients went viral.

Social media users expressed outrage at the latest contamination scandal.

“After reading these issues that have been exposed, I am not shocked at all!” said one user on the X-like social media platform Weibo.

“From melamine to drinking kerosene, what have we not experienced?”

Another user said they hoped for a “quick” investigation and a “clear explanation” from authorities.

“Otherwise, I really don’t know what oil to buy,” they wrote.

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)