Harm caused by food packaging materials
The hazards caused by food packaging materials can be divided into direct contact and indirect contact, as well as frequent contact and accidental contact. For example, the kitchen counter and food will happen accidental contact; paper packaging food into the thermal insulation package, and the insulation package wall will occur indirect contact. These forms of exposure may provide opportunities for the migration of harmful substances.
From the point of view of production and processing, the harmfulness of food packaging can also be divided into two aspects. First, the harm caused by the material itself. The vast majority of packaging materials are chemical products, whose materials themselves have hidden dangers. For example, the monomers that crack at high temperatures in plastics and heavy metals in metal materials may be transferred to food through packaging.
Secondly, the harm caused by illegal additives in the production process. For example, in order to make children's tableware bright and cost-effective, some illegal vendors will use industrial color masterbatches to color their products. Because there are a lot of harmful substances in industrial color masterbatches, such as aromatic amines, heavy metals, etc., if ingested, serious consequences will be caused. For example, some manufacturers use recycled paper to produce food packaging paper, and use fluorescent whitening agents to improve the brightness of paper. Some studies have shown that fluorescent whitening agents into the human body will greatly increase the risk of human cancer. The possible illegal additive is phthalate ester, which is a plasticizer widely used in toys, food packaging materials, medical blood bags, hoses, cleaners and other products. Once it dissolves and enters the human body, it will produce estrogen-like effects on the human body, interfere with human endocrine, endanger the male reproductive system, increase the risk of breast cancer in women, endanger children's liver and kidney, and cause premature puberty in children.
