Plastic DEHP taints jams, juices but health risks ignored.
When writing about a tainted food incident, Focus Taiwan did not cover important health and reproductive risks of the contaminant, a plasticizer called DEHP.
A recent article by the Focus Taiwan news channel highlights the recent food contamination scandal in Taiwan. The article focuses on the use of food additives tainted with plasticizers, but fails to report on the human health risks associated with eating these chemicals.
A variety of foods contained the toxic substances because of contaminated raw materials supplied by two companies. One specific chemical – Di(2-ethylhexyl) phthalate (DEHP) – was used as a clouding agent in place of palm oil. The contaminant affected many foods, including fruit jams and pastes used in bakery goods.
DEHP is a type of phthalate that is added to hard plastics to make them soft and flexible. Medical tubing and bags and some vinyl products can contain DEHP. The industrial chemical is not meant to be consumed.
As the Focus Taiwan article explains, the chemical can be toxic. But to fully understand the risks associated with eating the tainted foods, a discussion of the potential adverse health effects of the contaminants seems necessary.
Adult intake relates to problems with sperm motility and viability in humans, with some studies also linking DEHP to obesity. Urinary measures of this chemical are also associated with behavioral problems in school-aged children. Rodent studies also show that dietary intake of DEHP by pregnant mothers can adversely impact normal sexual development and may also interfere with puberty onset.
While the article did include key information about the food contamination, it would have benefited by mentioning the potential adverse health effects related to ingesting this plasticizer.
The above work by Environmental Health News is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.
Based on a work at www.environmentalhealthnews.org.
