![]() ![]() Critics of FDA describe an agency that sets a high bar for alerting the public of food chemical safety issues, even when PFOA and similar compounds are detected in food at relatively high levels.įDA rarely checks back in with chemical makers about what is already in the food supply - even as science exposes more about health effects. In a six-month investigation, E&E News reviewed decades of FDA, corporate and court documents to form a clearer picture of the federal response to the chemicals’ presence in food. ![]() While much of the public focus so far has been on drinking water, the dangers of PFOA and similar compounds in food packaging have largely been overlooked, especially by regulators. The nation’s food safety watchdog agreed, effectively waiving the longer-term health study.įor the next half-century, PFOA would find its way into the American diet through everything from buttery popcorn to burgers and pizza. Only in “exceptional circumstances,” DuPont’s lawyer assured FDA, would the substance rub off packaging and make it into people’s food. So the company cut the amount of the coating it planned to apply to food packaging in half. With billions of dollars in future sales in the balance, questions about Zonyl’s safety were trouble for DuPont. Fast-food restaurants wrapped burgers and fries for working families. At supermarkets, paper and plastic containers were delivering more food options to millions of people. Americans wanted eating to be fast, easy and cheap. The DuPont product, Zonyl RP, entered the picture as the nation was transforming its food system. The scientists wanted a two-year health study of the nonstick coating and the unfamiliar chemicals it was made of.Ī key chemical in that mixture is now infamous: PFOA, a notorious polluter of U.S. ![]() “The petition is not acceptable for filing,” they wrote in an internal memo. Inside FDA, toxicologists were irritated. ![]()
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