FDA urged to overhaul food additive safety evaluations

A coalition of environmental and public health groups is challenging the US Food and Drug Administration’s process for evaluating the safety of new food additives. The groups want the agency to consider the combined health effects of all food additives that act similarly rather than assess each chemical individually.

In a Sept. 23 petition, the groups claim that the FDA and food manufacturers “have not taken into account the many chemicals we consume in our daily diet that are similar in structure or affect similar function(s) of organs in the body when making safety determinations for new additives.”

An investigation by the Environmental Defense Fund (EDF), one of the petitioners, revealed that manufacturers considered health effects from other, similar substances in the diet for only 1 of 877 food additives deemed generally recognized as safe (GRAS). Despite a legal mandate to consider cumulative effects, the FDA allowed the GRAS additives to enter the market, the petitioners say.

“Several food additives and contaminants in common foods—including nitrates, perchlorate, and thiocyanate—all harm the thyroid’s ability to use iodine to make a hormone essential to brain development,” Maricel Maffini, a consultant to the EDF, says in a statement. “Exposure to these related chemicals from various foods should be considered together, as a class, to reduce the risk for pregnant women and young children, as the chemicals all harm fetal and infant brain development in the same way.”

The FDA is required to respond to the petitioners within 180 days. It is currently accepting public comments on the requested changes.