By Simona Rossi
Recycled food packaging can lead to health problems due to the release of toxic mineral oils, a recent study by Swiss researchers has found.
Recycled cardboard is made from toxic chemicals derived from the ink used in printed newspapers.
The longer the environmentally-packaged food stays on the shelves the higher the degree of intoxication, the report found. Not even inner bags are sufficient to stop this process.
Foods such as pasta, flour, rice and cereals are at a higher risk of contamination because they have a greater surface area to volume.
And the safer option of using ‘virgin board’ cardboard produced, from freshly cut trees, is both uneconomical and environmentally damaging, according to an employee of a British cereal company.
The technical director of Morning Foods, Derek Croucher, said: “The environmental effects of changing would be massive. There simply aren’t enough trees in Europe for everyone to move to virgin board as a knee-jerk reaction to this.”
Environmentally responsible food companies, such as Jordans, have already stopped using the toxic packaging. The cereal company claims it has had to prioritise its customers’ safety over its environmental obligations.
Other companies, such as Weetabix and Kellogg’s, are still trying to find a suitable alternative to the cheap and green recycled cardboard.
The Food Standards Agency does not accept that there is any real evidence of serious risk and is conducting its own research on the safety of recycled food packaging in the UK.
Dr Koni Grob, of the government-run laboratory for the research on food safety of the Canton of Zurich, conducted the study for the German food ministry.
Out of 119 tested samples from German supermarkets, only 30 were deemed safe. The rest had degrees of mineral oils between 10 and 100 times higher than the accepted level.
Dr Grob’s study links high dosage and extended exposure to the chemicals with severe inflammation of internal organs and cancer.
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Argus, Brighton, brighton and hove city council, charity, comment, complaints, garden, green, neighbours, Olive Taylor, pensioner, piles, recycling, rubbish, waste
Olive Taylor’s garden is our shame, not hers
In Brighton, Comment on March 18, 2012 at 8:34 PMby Damien Murphy
Olive Taylor, 87, in her garden in Brighton.
Photo: Express and Star
WHILE most of us agree that recycling is important, most of us still knowingly bin recyclable waste, according to a study published last September.
The study showed that, for the most part, we throw out what we could recycle simply because we are too busy or too lazy.
So perhaps Brighton should be grateful to have someone like Olive Taylor, who has been picking up the slack, and the trash, for others for decades.
The Brighton pensioner has been shouldering more than her share of the burden, collecting cans and rubbish to recycle for charity since 1978.
But cleaning up after the rest of us is quite the Herculean task for a blind octogenarian, so it is little surprise her workload has literally piled up.
Brighton and Hove City Council has given the 87-year-old until April 10 to clear the four-foot-high piles of rubbish that line the path to her house.
It is hard to blame her neighbours for complaining about the rubbish and the flies it attracts, nor the council for viewing the hoard as a health risk.
Yet it is just as hard to doubt that Miss Taylor’s intentions are noble.
Back in 2003, Miss Taylor told the Argus: “[The council] seem to think I am an obsessive compulsive who collects rubbish for the sake of it… [but] it is there until I have sorted through it and taken it down to be recycled.”
It may be an eyesore and a hazard, but perhaps it is not Miss Taylor who should be ashamed of the mounds of rubbish.
Perhaps the shame better belongs to those of us who don’t take responsibility for the waste we produce, leaving it for others to pick up.
Clearing up Olive Taylor’s garden once and for all means getting better at cleaning up after ourselves, and binning only what we can’t recycle.
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