Most chemicals in food packaging lack data needed to protect consumers – scientists propose a way forward

Most chemicals present in food packaging and foodware lack the data needed to protect consumers. By grouping the more than 15,000 chemicals that can be used or found in food contact materials, they can be prioritized for regulatory review or phase out.

Food Packaging Forum Foundation

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An overview of priority food contact chemicals and groups

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Credit: Food Packaging Forum

In a new peer-reviewed scientific study published in the journal Environmental Science & Technology, scientists from the Food Packaging Forum Foundation present a practical, novel, and scalable approach to better protect consumer health. By grouping the more than 15,000 chemicals that can be used or found in food packaging, kitchenware, or other food contact materials, chemicals can be prioritized for regulatory review or phase out. This new approach will support the prevention of regrettable substitutions. 

Current food contact material regulations in Europe and North America do not sufficiently protect consumers’ health because 87% of chemicals lack adequate safety data to consider the wide range of health impacts that can occur. Until these food contact chemicals can be properly tested and the missing data are made available, the study’s authors propose using a grouping approach to efficiently prioritize potentially hazardous chemicals based on their chemical structure. Phase-outs, legal restrictions, or prioritized testing based on this grouping approach could help policymakers and manufacturers overcome the problematic data gaps and better protect human and environmental health.

Key Findings: 

• Major data gaps exist for the majority of chemicals. 1,222 food contact chemicals are already known to be hazardous for human health, but more than 13,000 lack sufficient publicly available data to determine whether or not they are safe for consumers. 
• There are 38 priority chemical groups to address. These groups have a high share of known hazardous chemicals and include ortho-phthalates, PFASs, alkyl phenols, organophosphates, isocyanates, primary aromatic amines, and others. 
• Grouping chemicals can help prevent regrettable substitutions. There are 4,222 food contact chemicals within these 38 priority groups. This means they are structurally similar to known hazardous chemicals and therefore could become regrettable substitutes. 
• Grouping chemicals can better protect consumers sooner. Current food contact regulations look at chemicals one-by-one, which is inefficient and ineffective given the major data gaps for important health endpoints. Using a group-based approach to address major data gaps can reduce the number of regulatory processes needed and ultimately better protect consumer health sooner. 

The published study includes a publicly available and evidence-based list of known hazardous chemicals in FCMs (FCCprio List) as well as an interactive application (FCCgroup, password: fccgroup2026) to help users easily identify whether a chemical belongs to one of the 38 priority groups. Based on publicly available hazard data, the chemicals on the FCCprio List could be considered for more restricted use in food contact applications. Given the current lack of necessary data, chemicals within an FCCgroup priority group(s) could be reevaluated for their safety and should not be used as drop-in alternatives for known hazardous chemicals—a practice that is known as regrettable substitution and that has occurred for chemicals such as bisphenol A (replaced by bisphenol F).

Webinar on September 7, 2026: Register to join the free webinar introducing the new study and app on September 7th at 4pm CEST (10:00am EDT). The study authors will present and answer audience questions: https://us02web.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_Q3-tOFvxT--HUSghh16YZQ 

Quotes from the authors:

Dr. Helene Wiesinger, co-author, Food Packaging Forum Foundation said:  

“There are many known hazardous chemicals in food packaging, but replacing them with very similar chemicals that have not been sufficiently tested is not solving the problem. Based on already known hazardous chemicals, we have identified 38 priority chemicals groups, and we developed a method to quickly identify them within any set of chemicals. This can help policymakers and manufacturers to quickly spot potential chemicals of concern and take appropriate action.”  

Dr. Jane Muncke, co-author, Food Packaging Forum Foundation said:  

“Our research shows just how little is known about so many of the chemicals consumers are exposed to everyday through the food packaging they buy. Today’s regulatory approaches in Europe and North America look at each chemical individually, but this is inefficient and does not sufficiently protect consumers. We are proposing an evidence-based grouping approach decision makers can already use now until the proper testing methods and testing data become available.”  

Albert Anguera Sempere, co-author, Food Packaging Forum Foundation said:  

“Our new FCCgroup app makes it easy and quick for anyone to screen a set of chemicals and find out which might be hazardous and an avoidable threat to consumer health. This can especially help companies stay ahead of future legal restrictions, avoid litigation, and better protect their customers.”

Study: Wiesinger, H., Parkinson, L. V., Geueke, B., Anguera Sempere, A., Boucher, J., Cabane, E., Scheringer, M, Muncke, M. (2026). Prioritizing and Grouping Food Contact Chemicals – From chaos to clarity. Environmental Science & Technology, DOI: 10.1021/acs.est.5c15186; online: September 1, 2026

FCCprio List: The list is freely available to download on the Food Packaging Forum’s website: https://foodpackagingforum.org/fccprio  

FCCgroup App: The app is freely available to access on the Food Packaging Forum’s website: https://foodpackagingforum.org/fccgroup (password to access: fccgroup2026) 

About the Food Packaging Forum: The Food Packaging Forum Foundation (FPF) is an independent, charitable, non-profit foundation registered and based in Zurich, Switzerland. FPF enables stakeholders to make better decisions by applying the latest science on chemicals in food contact materials and on the environmental impacts of food packaging. Through its independent, balanced, and science-based publications and tools, the Food Packaging Forum contributes to protecting human and environmental health. 

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Journal

Environmental Science & Technology

DOI

10.1021/acs.est.5c15186 

Method of Research

Data/statistical analysis

Subject of Research

Not applicable

Article Title

Prioritizing and Grouping Food Contact Chemicals – From chaos to clarity

Article Publication Date

1-Sep-2026

 

Nature-inspired 3D printing could improve large-scale renewable energy storage

University of Waterloo researchers develop a new electrode design that could make redox flow batteries more effective for storing wind and solar energy

University of Waterloo

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Professor Maxime van der Heijden holding a 3D printed structure that will be converted into an electrode through heat treatment.

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Credit: University of Waterloo

Researchers have created a 3D-printed electrode that could help make it easier and safer to store large amounts of renewable energy generated by wind and solar farms.

Led by University of Waterloo professor Dr. Maxime van der Heijden, the research team drew inspiration from natural structures to redesign a key component of redox flow batteries (RFBs), a technology that can store electricity for later use. The new design helps battery liquid move more efficiently, allowing the chemical reactions that store and release energy to occur more effectively.

Redox flow batteries work differently from the lithium-ion batteries commonly found in phones, electric vehicles and many energy-storage systems.

These batteries use water-based electrolytes rather than the flammable materials found in lithium-ion batteries, making them a potentially safer alternative for large-scale energy storage.

Redox flow batteries are a complementary technology to lithium-ion batteries for large -scale energy storage applications. Their water-based electrolytes make them a safer option for storing renewable energy at the scale needed to supply, for example, communities and the electrical grid with continuous renewable energy.

“Instead of storing energy in solid materials, they store energy in liquid electrolytes held in external tanks,” said van der Heijden, a chemical engineering professor at Waterloo. “The amount of stored energy can be increased simply by using larger tanks, making them well-suited for large-scale renewable energy storage and grid applications.”

That flexibility could become increasingly important as more electricity comes from renewable sources. Wind and solar power are intermittent, as they do not always produce electricity when it is needed, creating a need for technologies that can store excess energy and return it to the grid later.

Researchers used 3D printing to create porous RFB electrodes, enabling precise control over their structure and fluid flow.

“With 3D printing, we can design the internal structure of an electrode in ways that are difficult to achieve using conventional manufacturing,” said van der Heijden. “That gives us much greater control over how the liquid moves through the battery and reaches the surfaces where the energy-storing reactions take place.”

A key innovation was the use of triply periodic minimal surface (TPMS) geometries, complex, repeating three-dimensional shapes that can resemble structures found in nature.

The researchers tested several TPMS designs and found that one known as the “diamond” geometry worked best, increasing performance by 52 per cent.

They then used a digital light-processing 3D printer to produce the porous structures, which were heat-treated to form conductive carbon electrodes capable of carrying electricity.

The team successfully tested the electrodes in laboratory flow cell experiments and in a working vanadium redox flow battery, demonstrating that the 3D-printed designs can function in an operating battery. The proof of concept could help pave the way for more efficient redox flow batteries designed for large-scale energy storage.

Future research will focus on increasing the electrodes’ surface area, improving manufacturing methods and exploring advanced design tools to create even more effective electrode structures.

The study, Enhancing Mass Transport in Redox Flow Batteries with 3D-Printed Triply Periodic Minimal Surface Electrode Structures, appears in the Journal of Energy Storage.

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Journal

Journal of Energy Storage

The redox flow battery setup consists of a reactor connected to two beakers that serve as electrolyte tanks, with tubing running through a pump to circulate the liquid electrolytes through the battery. The redox flow battery is connected to a potentiostat, which collects and records the energy generated by the battery.

Heat-treated electrode showing its porous structure and the fine details retained after heat treatment.

Credit

University of Waterloo

 

Potential material for safer Li-ion batteries achieves record-high conductivity

Nagoya University

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Solid-state electrolyte materials can pave way for safer Li-ion batteries in the future

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Credit: Sumeet Kulkarni, Nagoya University

There is a good reason why every time you check in for a flight, you are asked to confirm that there are no portable chargers or power banks in your checked luggage. A highly flammable liquid electrolyte shuttles lithium (Li) ions between the electrodes of the Li-ion batteries that power these devices. As a result, if a Li-ion battery is damaged, its liquid electrolyte can cause a catastrophic fire.

Solid electrolytes, which can help reduce this risk, are an active area of research. One of the most important challenges in making solid-state batteries is increasing their ionic conductivity, or how easily positively charged Li ions can move through the solid electrolyte.  

There are some solid electrolytes containing sulfide- and chloride-based materials that how high conductivity. This conductivity arises because electron clouds around negatively charged sulfide or chloride ions can easily deform as lithium ions pass through the material. But these electrolytes have their own safety issues: exposure to humidity can release toxic gases such as hydrogen sulfide and hydrogen chloride into the air.

In comparison, oxides and oxyfluorides are much more robust. When used as solid electrolytes, they are also more electrochemically stable, which is important because battery materials experience repeated voltage changes during charging and discharging. But on the flip side, they have generally exhibited low conductivity.

“At this stage, safety and ionic conductivity are a trade-off,” said Takeshi Yajima, an associate professor at the Department of Materials Design Innovation Engineering at Nagoya University. “Oxyfluorides are safer but have low conductivity, while sulfides have high conductivity but can be dangerous.”

A surprisingly good conductor…

In 2024, a new oxyfluoride crystal with a chemical formula Li2–xLa(1+x)/3Nb2O6F, shortened as “LLNOF”, was discovered to have an unusually large conductivity of seven millisiemens per centimeter (mS/cm), which is comparable to liquid electrolytes. But why it showed this conductivity remained a mystery: the electron cloud around the central fluoride ion does not deform as easily as in sulfides or chlorides to explain LLNOF’s behavior through the previously known mechanism.

Soon after this discovery, Yajima and his lab decided to grow their own, high-quality LLNOF single crystals to pin down the mechanism. This, Yajima says, was the hardest part, taking over a year to achieve. “We had to make sure that the crystals were of sufficiently high quality for structural analysis,” he said.

But the researchers’ efforts bore fruit as they were able to grow millimeter-sized LLNOF single crystals using the Bridgman method. Using single crystal diffraction, they were able to peek into the local arrangement and rearrangement of atoms within each crystal unit.

…reveals its secret

What they found was a dynamic interplay among four atomic sites that form a tetrahedron around LLNOF’s fluoride ion. Each of these sites can either contain a lithium ion, a lanthanum atom, or remain vacant. The researchers found that every time a Li ion makes a jump onto the next vacant spot, the central fluoride ion migrates slightly towards the lithium’s original site. Fluoride ions effectively “get out of the way,” lowering the energy barrier for Li ions to hop around.

That is why compared to other oxyfluorides where the atoms stay rigid, LLNOF shows higher Li ion conductivity.

The researchers then tweaked the composition of this crystal by changing the relative amounts of lithium, lanthanum, and vacant sites in LLNOF (the “x” in its chemical formula). They found that conductivity improved by lowering x, reaching a maximum value of 16.3 mS/cm. This result, representing the highest reported bulk Li-ion conductivity among oxide-related solid electrolytes, has been published in the Journal of the American Chemical Society.

Yajima believes this mechanism, which does not rely on highly polarizable ions, can be used to develop even more efficient solid oxide-based solid electrolytes. “The general understanding has been that sulfide-based materials are better conductors because of their anion character, but this mechanism challenges that understanding,” he adds. This research marks an important step towards realizing practical solid-state Li ion batteries.

 

A recently discovered material called LLNOF exhibits high ionic conductivity for oxide-based solid electrolytes in future Li-ion batteries.

Credit

Sumeet Kulkarni and Takeshi Yajima, Nagoya University

 

As the lithium ion in LLNOF moves to a vacant site, the central fluoride ion migrates in the opposite direction, lowering the energy barrier for lithium ion movement.

Credit

Yajima et al., Journ. Amer. Chem. Soc., 2026

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Journal

Journal of the American Chemical Society

DOI

10.1021/jacs.6c08912 

Method of Research

Experimental study

Subject of Research

Not applicable

Article Title

Migration-Coupled Local Fluoride Relaxation in Li2–xLa(1+x)/3Nb2O6F Single Crystals

 

COVID's toll on kids was milder than predicted, six-country study finds

Setbacks were concentrated among children already facing other risks; most children recovered

Society for Research in Child Development

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Six years after COVID-19 disrupted childhood around the world, new research following the same children from before the pandemic through today finds that the damage was far less widespread than early warnings predicted. A Special Section in the journal Child Development, synthesizing 17 long-term studies across six countries, finds that most children's health, learning, social development, and wellbeing recovered substantially. Setbacks that persisted were concentrated among children who already faced other risks before the pandemic began.

Early studies of COVID-19, based on short-term data collected during the pandemic itself, warned of widespread and lasting harm to child development. This new research, tracking children over a longer period, tells a different story: pandemic impacts were real and wide-ranging, but not as severe as initially feared, and many effects weakened over time. The children who fared worst and recovered more slowly were disproportionately those shaped by pre-existing risks — not the pandemic alone.

These findings are featured in the Society for Research in Child Development's flagship journal, Child Development, in a Special Section on COVID-19 titled "Children's Developmental Trajectories in the Long Shadow of COVID-19." The Special Section is led by co-editors Anna D. Johnson (Georgetown University), Gabriela Livas (University of Texas, Austin), and Seth Pollak (University of Wisconsin-Madison).

"Overall, the evidence in this special section challenges dominant narratives of universal 'learning loss,' suggesting instead that COVID-19 interacted with existing inequalities," said co-editor Anna Johnson from Georgetown University. "The research highlights the resilience in children and shows the importance of context in shaping their physical, cognitive, and emotional skills over time."

Research articles from this Special Section are freely available at https://academic.oup.com/chidev/issue on the Oxford University Press website.

The Society for Research in Child Development advances the developmental sciences and promotes the use of developmental research to improve human lives.

For additional information, or interviews with authors of specific studies, please contact SRCD's Public Relations lead, Jessica Efstathiou: jefstathiou@srcd.org.

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Journal

Child Development

Subject of Research

People

Article Title

Children’s Developmental Trajectories in the Long Shadow of COVID-19

 

To promote climate action, emotion matters more than information

A UNIGE study shows that campaigns designed to appeal to people’s emotions are more likely to inspire climate action

Université de Genève

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What types of communication are most effective in motivating people to take action on climate change? To find out, a team from the University of Geneva (UNIGE) reviewed a vast body of research from Switzerland and abroad examining the impact of different climate communication campaigns. The findings suggest that messages designed to evoke emotions – such as a sense of wonder at the beauty of a landscape – are more effective than simply presenting scientific facts. By contrast, messages emphasising individual and collective responsibility appear to have little or no effect. Published in the Journal of Environmental Psychology, these findings offer practical guidance to public authorities and organisations seeking to communicate more effectively about climate change.

Every year, public authorities and non-governmental organisations spend millions on communication campaigns designed to encourage people to take action on climate change. But which strategies work best? Should campaigns rely on fear or positive messages, prioritise facts or appeal to emotions, and focus on words or visuals?

A team from UNIGE’s Consumer Decision and Sustainable Behavior Lab, part of the Faculty of Psychology and Educational Sciences and the Swiss Center for Affective Sciences, has conducted the first large-scale study of its kind. The researchers analysed and synthesised the findings of 71 studies examining the impact of specific climate communication strategies, drawing on data from a total of 216,000 participants.

Almost all strategies have a positive effect

The strategies reviewed encompassed 15 different approaches, ranging from providing factual information to fill knowledge gaps to appealing to emotions – for example, by evoking a sense of wonder or awe at the beauty of nature. They also included approaches based on the principle of bounded rationality, which are designed to facilitate decision-making by highlighting specific aspects of climate change, such as its health or financial consequences.

"Our research shows that almost all of these strategies are likely to have a positive effect on people’s intentions and behaviours, as well as on their support for climate policies," explains Tobias Brosch, director of the laboratory, who led the study with Mario Herberz, a postdoctoral researcher. “Only strategies based on individual and collective responsibility – with messages such as ‘success depends largely on you’ – appear to have little or no effect. They may even foster reactance.”

Stories rather than facts

But not all effective strategies are equally effective. “Campaigns that evoke a strong emotional response – particularly through storytelling or by inspiring a sense of wonder at the beauty of nature – are significantly more effective than simply presenting facts and scientific evidence. Messages that draw on moral, ethical or even religious considerations, highlighting our connection to something greater than ourselves that we have a responsibility to preserve, also achieve better results.”

The researchers also found that messages are more effective when they include images.

“Despite these differences, the fact that almost all of these strategies can have a positive effect is encouraging,” says Tobias Brosch. “This is particularly encouraging given that the studies reviewed mainly measured the effects of messages to which people were exposed only once. Yet we know that repeated exposure can strengthen their impact. At a time when the scientific evidence is well established and the challenge is to turn knowledge into action, there is considerable scope to improve climate communication.”

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Journal

Journal of Environmental Psychology

DOI

10.1016/j.jenvp.2026.103176 

Method of Research

News article

Subject of Research

Not applicable

Article Title

"A systematic review and meta-analysis of communication strategies to promote climate action"