Your normal food plastic packaging is laden with harmful substances

“We found as many as 9936 different chemicals in a single plastic product used as food packaging,” said Wagner. — AFP

FROM yoghurt pots and salad trays to cheese slices wrapped in film, researchers at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU) have analysed the packaging of several food products purchased between winter 2020 and spring 2021, from five countries around the world (United States, Germany, Norway, Britain and South Korea) selected for their high plastic consumption. The aim was to determine whether packaging in contact with food contained substances that could prove harmful to consumers.

Published in the journal Environmental Science & Technology, their research reveals the presence of (many) chemical substances in the food packaging analysed. “We found as many as 9,936 different chemicals in a single plastic product used as food packaging,” said Martin Wagner, a professor at NTNU’s Department of Biology, quoted in a news release.