given to further processing customers by ingredient and raw materials suppliers that
make Prop 65 compliance statements, such as “This product may contain…” followed by a long, broad list of organics, metals, processing chemicals, and so on—
statements which may indemnify suppliers, resulting in a secondary scale-up of issues
and questions from the ingredient supplier to the processing facility, which now
knows that a laundry list of chemicals may be in the final product as well. In turn,
this raises a specter about what levels of such impurities are in the product as well as
questions about what the consumer might be exposed to by ingesting the product.
Other emerging chemical issues to be considered in a food company’s risk analysis include those associated with water sources and packaging. Whether the processor
is using water as a product ingredient or
in the manufacturing process, there is a
possibility that the water contains some
impurity or treatment chemical that is
carried into the product in low concentrations. Potential packaging issues related to inks, plasticizers, dyes and other
potential contaminants are not necessarily associated with the product itself but
are tangential to it, which in turn raises
questions about the integrity of the
product.
Contaminant Reports from
the USGS and CDC
The most recent USGS and CDC
chemical contaminant reports provide
an overview of some specific chemicals
of interest that food companies should
be aware of when doing risk analysis:
• USGS Pharmaceuticals, Hormones,
and Other Organic Wastewater
Contaminants in US Streams, 2002. This
paper, published in the American
Chemical Society’s journal,
Environmental Science & Technology,
focused on analytical methods development, environmental occurrence, source
identification, and transport and fate of
the following target analytes: Veterinary
and human antibiotics ( 22); prescription
drugs ( 19); steroids and hormones ( 15);
and 39 other wastewater-related compounds (insecticides, plasticizers, fire
retardants, etc.), for a total of 95 analytes surveyed.
The USGS detected 82 of the 95 targeted analytes, with as many as 38 analytes detected in a sample. The most frequently detected compounds were
steroids, non-prescription drugs, insect
repellent, detergent metabolites, disinfectants, dyes and plasticizers. Although
the initial focus and expectation of the
USGS researchers was to find hormones
and antibiotics, surprisingly the biggest
incidence of chemicals found fell into
the “Other” category where they crossed
in the different sectors studied (Figure
1). The attached bar charts show the different classes of chemicals identified,
their concentrations on the lower scale
and the detection frequency on the
upper scale. As shown on the chart, fragrances and flavors were detected at low
levels but were placed on the list
