Next time you’re ordering from a favorite fast food place, or tossing some popcorn in the microwave, think about this… the chemicals that are used to make food wrappers like grease-proof paper have also been found, for the first time ever, someplace you might not like – in human blood.
This according to startling new research in the journal Environmental Science & Technology, the latest in a series of studies that date back to the late 1990s on compounds known as perfluorochemicals or PFCs for short.
And since we’re abbreviating, there’s PFOA (perfuorooctanoic acid) a rather worrisome member of this family; PFOS (perfluorooctane sulfonate) is another. where can i buy PRO-LAD online Finally diPAP (polfluoroalkyl phosphoric acid diesters) is the compound that keeps the wrapper around your food from getting greasy.
Scott Mabury, a chemist at the University of Toronto and his team, wanted to learn more about the as-yet-unstudied precursor to PFOA, diPAP, a chemical used to make fast food wrappers resist grease.
He suspected these substances were leaking from the wrappers into the food, and it turns out he was right.
These chemicals aren’t sold commercially, rather they’re products or aids to processing used to make other things.
Both PFOA and PFOS resist oil and water, so they’re ideal as linings for carpets as well as the coating on non-stick pans, but you’ll also find them in our clothes and electronics, and in food packaging like microwave popcorn bags and pizza boxes. They are used by the biggest brands like Teflon, Stainmaster, Scotchgard and Gore-Tex.
The team used a very sensitive, half million dollar mass spectrometer to look at 20 pooled blood samples, collected all across the Midwestern U.S. of both men and women ranging in age from 19 to 70 years old.