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The nonstick coatings known as perfluorinated compounds (PFCs), an object of increasing concern because of their evident health hazards and increasing ubiquity in everything from household dust to drinking water, are also widely present in fast-food wrappers.
About 40 percent of the food-contact packaging collected from 27 fast-food chains in 2014 and 2015 carried a key indicator of PFC content, according to research published this morning in Environmental Science & Technology, a peer-reviewed journal of the American Chemical Society. And that figure may actually understate the actual presence of PFCs.
The chains examined ran the gamut from Arby’s to Taco Bell, and the test locations ranged across the country from Boston to Seattle and San Francisco. Except for a very few outfits where only a few samples were collected, all the companies were using packaging that contained the PFC marker.
That marker was fluorine, which a new screening technique has made quicker, cheaper and easier to detect than the PFCs themselves, which require a more complicated analysis. And while fluorine can be present for other reasons, researchers report that further testing of fluorine-positive packaging samples found “a vast majority” to contain PFCs.
Moreover, as co-author David Andrews explained to me, the fluorine screening can also understate actual PFC presence, since some samples that came through the screen as negative for fluorine later tested positive for one or more PFCs, including some varieties that are no longer manufactured in the U.S. and have been banned from food-contact packaging.
www.minnpost.com
About 40 percent of the food-contact packaging collected from 27 fast-food chains in 2014 and 2015 carried a key indicator of PFC content, according to research published this morning in Environmental Science & Technology, a peer-reviewed journal of the American Chemical Society. And that figure may actually understate the actual presence of PFCs.
The chains examined ran the gamut from Arby’s to Taco Bell, and the test locations ranged across the country from Boston to Seattle and San Francisco. Except for a very few outfits where only a few samples were collected, all the companies were using packaging that contained the PFC marker.
That marker was fluorine, which a new screening technique has made quicker, cheaper and easier to detect than the PFCs themselves, which require a more complicated analysis. And while fluorine can be present for other reasons, researchers report that further testing of fluorine-positive packaging samples found “a vast majority” to contain PFCs.
Moreover, as co-author David Andrews explained to me, the fluorine screening can also understate actual PFC presence, since some samples that came through the screen as negative for fluorine later tested positive for one or more PFCs, including some varieties that are no longer manufactured in the U.S. and have been banned from food-contact packaging.
Fast-food wrappings are found to carry nonstick coatings linked to health risks - MinnPost
About 40 percent of the food-contact packaging collected from 27 fast-food chains in 2014 and 2015 carried a key indicator of PFC content, according to researchers.
www.minnpost.com
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