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Health advocates sue FDA to remove phthalates from food
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Tuesday, 21 January, 2025, 13 : 00 PM [IST]
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Washington, USA
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A group of health advocates, including Centre for Food Safety, and represented by Earthjustice sued the US Food and Drug Administration (US FDA), to force the agency to reevaluate its decades-old authorisations for the use of certain phthalates in food packaging and food production materials.
Phthalates are a group of hormone-disrupting chemicals that leach into food from these food-contact materials. The FDA's authorisations are based on safety assessments that are at least forty years old, and the agency has refused advocates' calls to update them.
Kristina Sinclair, staff attorney at the Centre for Food Safety, said, "The FDA's failure to act on phthalates is a dereliction of its duty to protect public health. These toxic, hormone-disrupting chemicals are linked to birth defects, infertility, and harm to children's brain development. By ignoring decades of science, the FDA is allowing industry to profit while endangering millions of people. It's time for the agency to prioritise safety over corporate interests."
Members of the coalition that filed the lawsuit first asked the FDA to revoke these authorisations in 2016 based on decades of scientific evidence linking phthalates to birth defects, infertility, preterm birth, harm to children's brain development, and other serious health harms. FDA failed to respond for six years and ultimately rejected the coalition's demand for the FDA to reevaluate the safety of using phthalates in food-contact materials. After years of inaction, the advocates sued the FDA in 2021, forcing the agency to respond. In 2022, the FDA denied the petition. Despite the advocates' appeal to reconsider, the FDA upheld its decision in October 2024, allowing phthalate contamination of our food to continue.
Seven years ago, the Consumer Product Safety Commission banned many phthalates from children's toys based on their health risks, while finding that most phthalate exposure comes from food. Yet the FDA, which authorises the food-contact uses of phthalates that contaminate our food supply, has failed to take action.
Earthjustice filed the lawsuit in the US Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit on behalf of Alaska Community Action on Toxics, Breast Cancer Prevention Partners, Centre for Environmental Health, Centre for Food Safety, Centre for Science in the Public Interest, Defend Our Health, Environmental Defence Fund, and the Learning Disabilities Association of Illinois.
Katherine O'Brien, Earthjustice Attorney, said, "The FDA is knowingly putting millions of people in the US at risk of life-altering health problems by continuing to green-light uses of phthalates that contaminate our food. FDA's decision defies decades of science and the agency's core purpose of keeping the food supply safe."
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