Plastic food packaging widely used around the world was put under the microscope by Norwegian researchers and their results were extremely worrying, according to two publications in the scientific journal “Environmental Science & Technology”.
“We detected 9,936 different chemicals in a single plastic product used as food packaging,” said Dr. Martin Wagner, an associate professor in the Department of Biology at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU), who has been studying the chemicals in plastic products for several years. along with his team.
Negative effect on hormones and metabolism
In the first study the researchers looked at 36 different plastic products used as food packaging. The plastic packaging came from five countries: USA, UK, South Korea, Germany and Norway.
“In most of these plastic products we have identified chemicals that can affect hormone secretion and metabolism,” noted Professor Wagner and explained that these negative effects are of great importance given that both hormones and metabolism play a key role in orderly functioning of the organization.
Hormones are the body’s “messengers”. They are secreted by many different glands and allow the organs to communicate with each other. As for metabolism, it is the set of different biochemical processes that convert the chemical energy of food into chemical energy of the human body and into heat.
Effect on signal transmission
In the second study, the researchers tested different chemical combinations of the plastics to discover their potential effect on G protein-coupled receptors. These receptors play an important role in the transmission of signals within the human body. “We identified 11 combinations of chemicals in plastic packaging that act on these signaling receptors,” said Dr. Wagner.
Safer plastics are needed
“Both these and previous findings show that plastics are exposing us to toxic chemicals. All these elements reinforce the opinion that we need to redesign plastics to make them safer,” the professor underlined.
Leakage of chemicals from plastic
In the past it was not clear whether the chemicals in plastics can be released into the environment under normal conditions or whether they remain bound to the plastic. However, a few years ago, another research group (in which Dr. Wagner participated) demonstrated that most plastic products leak chemicals when the products are submerged in water. In fact, in that study, researchers had discovered that some of the chemicals in plastics can affect human fertility.
At least what we know
Given that plastic products contain many different chemicals, scientists are not able to find the effects of all these chemicals at the same time. This practically means that we still know very little about what most of the chemicals in plastics can do to our bodies.
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