Chemical Contaminants

Lizzie Vann Foundation

Contaminants and natural toxins in food

Lizzie Vann Foundation

Contaminants and natural toxins in food

There are a number of ways that contaminants can enter the food supply as we are surrounded by a multitude of different chemicals used for specific purposes in everyday life. As a consequence, there are various hazardous substances like dioxins, phthalates and flame-retardants circulating in the environment as well as contact materials from food packaging which can leach into food. Natural toxins can also find themselves entering the food chain for human consumption and process contaminants are generated in food as a result of chemical or heat reactions occurring during cooking and processing. These can all have an impact on ecosystems, wildlife and human health. Whilst it is not always simple to categorise food contaminants as some are both present naturally in foods as well as from contamination or may come from approved additives in food, they generally have no function and their presence is seen as undesirable.

Many substances that can contaminate food are subject to approval processes and in the UK this work is spread across a number of Food Standards Agency Government committees (The Committee on Toxicity of Chemicals in Food, Consumer, Products and the Environment (COT), The Committee on Carcinogenicity of Chemicals in Food, Consumer Products and the Environment (COC) and The Committee on Mutagenicity of Chemicals in Food, Consumer Products and the Environment (COM)). The European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) in the EU provides significant information as well as The Joint WHO/FAO Expert Committee on Food Additives (JECFA), and the UK Government Committees consider EFSA and JECFA findings in their statements and recommendations. Scientific literature and those working in NGO with a specific remit to monitor impacts of contaminants on human health also provide information. You can find out more about how we establish whether a substance has an adverse effect on an organism, system or sub-population in the section on risk assessment and regulation (x-ref here).

There are some food contaminants that we are not including information for on our website:

1. Physical contamination of foods occurs when objects that should not be in a food are accidentally added (e.g. pieces of plastic or metal). We will however include any alerts where food has been found to have physical contamination in the news pages.

2. Allergens. We are also not covering allergens in food. For more information on allergens see Allergen labelling | Food Standards Agency

3. Microbial contamination of food leading to food poisoning. We are also not providing information related to food poisoning. Information on food poisoning can be found here Food poisoning | Food Standards Agency and from The Chartered Institute of Environmental Health Welcome to CIEH.

4. Veterinary drug residues, many of which are antibiotic related. You can find out more about these here Residues of veterinary medicinal products – European Commission

The contaminant groups we will provide information on are outlined below and you can follow these links to pages which tell you more about the contaminants in these groups.

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