Food packaging chemicals lack safety data, scientists propose a solution

Every day, consumers around the world unwrap their food from packaging, cook in nonstick pans, sip from plastic bottles, and microwave leftovers in containers whose chemical composition remains, in large part, a mystery to science. A new peer-reviewed study published in the journal Environmental Science & Technology has revealed the staggering scale of this knowledge gap: of the more than 15,000 chemicals that can be used in or migrate from food packaging, kitchenware, and other food contact materials, the overwhelming majority—approximately 87 percent—lack adequate safety data to assess the full range of health effects they may cause. The research, conducted by scientists at the Food Packaging Forum Foundation, a Zurich-based independent charitable organization, does more than document the problem. It offers a practical, scalable solution: a systematic grouping approach that allows regulators and manufacturers to prioritize potentially hazardous chemicals for review, restriction, or phase-out, even in the absence of complete toxicological profiles.

The study’s central finding is sobering. While 1,222 food contact chemicals are already recognized as hazardous to human health—substances with well-documented links to endocrine disruption, carcinogenicity, reproductive toxicity, and other adverse outcomes—more than 13,000 chemicals remain in a regulatory gray zone. They are used in materials that touch food every day, yet insufficient publicly available data exist to determine whether they are safe. This means that when a consumer picks up a plastic-wrapped sandwich, a canned beverage, or a takeout container, there is a substantial chance the chemicals involved have never been comprehensively evaluated for the breadth of harm they could inflict. Current regulatory frameworks in Europe and North America, the researchers argue, were simply not designed to cope with a universe of chemicals this large and this poorly characterized.

The scale of the challenge becomes clearer when one considers how food contact chemicals are regulated today. Under existing systems, chemicals are typically assessed one at a time, with each substance requiring its own evaluation process, its own dossier of toxicological studies, and its own regulatory determination. Given that comprehensive testing of a single chemical can take years and cost millions of dollars, applying this approach to more than 13,000 data-poor substances would be a bureaucratic and scientific undertaking of generations. Meanwhile, consumers continue to be exposed, and manufacturers continue to bring new materials to market. The one-by-one paradigm, the authors contend, is both inefficient and ineffective—a conclusion that will surprise no one who has followed the slow pace of chemical regulation over the past several decades.

To break this impasse, the research team turned to a strategy that toxicologists have long advocated: structural grouping. Chemicals that share similar molecular architectures often share similar biological activities, because the ways in which molecules interact with receptors, enzymes, and DNA depend on their three-dimensional shapes and functional groups. By analyzing the chemical structures of the more than 15,000 food contact chemicals cataloged in the Food Packaging Forum’s database of food contact chemicals, the scientists identified 38 priority chemical groups—clusters of structurally related substances with a high proportion of known hazardous members. These groups include some of the most controversial chemical families in modern consumer products: ortho-phthalates, the plastic softeners associated with reproductive and developmental harm; per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, or PFAS, the so-called forever chemicals linked to cancer, immune dysfunction, and thyroid disease; alkyl phenols; organophosphates; isocyanates; and primary aromatic amines, among others.

The power of this grouping approach lies in what it enables regulators and companies to do today, without waiting for exhaustive testing. In total, 3,547 food contact chemicals fall within these 38 priority groups. Because these chemicals are structurally similar to substances already known to be dangerous, they carry an elevated probability of sharing that danger—and they represent prime candidates for what toxicologists call regrettable substitution. This phenomenon, in which a hazardous chemical is replaced by a structurally related but untested alternative that later proves equally or nearly as harmful, has become one of the most frustrating patterns in chemical safety. The textbook example is bisphenol A, the endocrine-disrupting plasticizer that manufacturers increasingly replaced with bisphenol F, a close chemical cousin that subsequent research suggested carried comparable hazards. By flagging entire structural families at once, the new approach is designed to prevent industry from simply hopping from one problematic chemical to the next.

To make this method usable in practice, the researchers have released two publicly accessible tools. The first is the FCCprio List, an evidence-based inventory of known hazardous chemicals found in food contact materials, compiled from publicly available hazard data. Chemicals on this list, the authors suggest, are reasonable candidates for more restricted use in food contact applications. The second is an interactive application called FCCgroup, which allows users—whether regulators, researchers, or company compliance officers—to screen any set of chemicals and quickly determine whether individual substances belong to one of the 38 priority groups. The intent is to democratize hazard screening: rather than requiring specialized expertise to identify potential chemicals of concern, the tool makes structural prioritization available to anyone with an interest in the safety of their supply chain or their products.

The implications for industry are significant. Companies that manufacture or use food packaging materials face a growing thicket of legal restrictions, litigation risks, and consumer scrutiny. A tool that flags potentially hazardous chemicals before they become the target of regulation offers a way to stay ahead of the curve, reformulate products proactively, and avoid the reputational and financial costs of being caught with a regrettable substitute in the portfolio. As Albert Anguera Sempere, a co-author of the study, noted, the app can help companies screen their chemical inventories quickly and identify substances that might pose an avoidable threat to consumer health—an advantage both for risk management and for building consumer trust.

The researchers are careful to frame their approach as a bridge, not a destination. Grouping by structure is a triage tool, not a substitute for proper toxicological evaluation. The ideal outcome, they emphasize, would be for the missing data on food contact chemicals to be generated through rigorous testing, allowing each substance to be assessed on its own merits across the full range of health endpoints. Until that happens—which, at current testing rates, could take decades—the grouping strategy offers an evidence-based way to reduce exposure to the most likely hazards first. In effect, it converts a chaotic, intractable data problem into an ordered queue of priorities, focusing scarce regulatory and scientific resources where they are most likely to protect human health.

The scope of the problem the study addresses extends beyond individual consumer choices. Food contact materials are one of the most intimate and continuous routes of chemical exposure in modern life. Chemicals can migrate from packaging into food through contact, heat, acidity, and time, meaning that even substances used at low concentrations can accumulate in the diet over a lifetime. Recent biomonitoring studies have detected a wide array of food contact chemicals in human blood, urine, and other tissues, underscoring that exposure is not hypothetical. For vulnerable populations—pregnant women, infants, and children, whose developing systems are particularly sensitive to endocrine-active substances—the stakes are especially high. The fact that such a large fraction of these chemicals has never been adequately characterized represents, in the researchers’ view, a systemic failure of existing regulatory architecture.

Dr. Jane Muncke, a co-author of the study, framed the findings bluntly: the research demonstrates just how little is known about so many of the chemicals that consumers are exposed to every day through the packaging on the food they buy. Regulatory approaches in Europe and North America that treat each chemical individually are inefficient and do not sufficiently protect consumers, she argued, and the grouping approach offers decision makers something they can act on immediately, before the slow machinery of full chemical testing catches up. Dr. Helene Wiesinger, the study’s lead author, echoed this sentiment, stressing that replacing known hazardous chemicals with very similar, insufficiently tested alternatives simply perpetuates the problem rather than solving it. The 38 priority groups her team identified, together with the screening method they developed, provide a way to spot potential chemicals of concern quickly and take appropriate action.

The study arrives at a moment of heightened global attention to chemical safety. The European Union’s chemicals strategy, ongoing negotiations over a global plastics treaty, and mounting public concern about PFAS contamination have all pushed the question of how to manage tens of thousands of poorly characterized substances to the top of the policy agenda. What this study contributes is a concrete, operational answer to a question that has often felt paralyzing: where to begin? By ranking the universe of food contact chemicals by structural similarity to known hazards, the Food Packaging Forum team has transformed an unmanageable problem into a tractable one—38 groups, 3,547 chemicals, and a clear starting point for regulators, manufacturers, and researchers alike. The study, titled “Prioritizing and Grouping Food Contact Chemicals – From chaos to clarity,” was published online on September 1, 2026, and its authors declare no competing financial interests. The researchers will present their findings and demonstrate the FCCgroup application in a free public webinar, and both the FCCprio List and the app are freely available through the Food Packaging Forum’s website.

News Publication Date: 1-Sep-2026

Web References: Food Packaging Forum Foundation (FCCprio List and FCCgroup app, freely available via the Food Packaging Forum website)

References: Wiesinger, H., Parkinson, L. V., Geueke, B., Anguera Sempere, A., Boucher, J., Cabane, E., Scheringer, M., Muncke, J. (2026). Prioritizing and Grouping Food Contact Chemicals – From chaos to clarity. Environmental Science & Technology. https://doi.org/10.1021/acs.est.5c15186