Health fears over card used in food packaging

Researchers in Switzerland found that mineral oils in printing ink from recycled newspapers used in cardboard can get into foods such as cereal, pasta and rice – even passing through protective inner plastic bags.

Koni Grob, of the Food Safety Laboratory in Zurich, said toxicologists had linked the oils to inflammation of internal organs and even cancer, though he stressed that individual meals would contain only a tiny dose of the chemicals.

He said switching to non-recycled packaging was too costly in terms of the environment and new solutions needed to be considered such as inner food linings which act as effective barriers to the oils.

Research has found that products such as paper and bags made of polyethylene and polypropylene are ineffective as a barrier from mineral oils, he said, but aluminium foil was effective.

“Our bodies already contain on average roughly around one gramme of mineral oil – that is by far the largest contaminant we have in our body. For some people it is 10 grammes, which is a high value,” he said.

“We are obviously accumulating mineral oil over a lifetime. What the baby gets through human milk is probably staying over a lifetime.

“For this reason, one month or less has no real effect, so there is no emergency, consumers should not make any rapid changes, we have to think about it.

“The easy idea to change over to fresh fibres is not a viable solution because it would cost too many trees. We need better solutions such as introducing special barriers.”

Yesterday, the BBC reported that cereal firm Jordans had stopped using recycled cardboard while other manufacturers were taking action to reduce levels of mineral oils in packaging.

The Swiss researchers analysed 119 products bought from German supermarkets last year.