News 12.07.2024

EU-wide ban of Bisphenol A in food contact materials finally in sight

  • politics and law
  • Transparency and food safety
Istock/pepifoto

On June 12, 2024, EU Member States agreed on the European Commission’s proposal to ban most uses of Bisphenol A (BPA) and other bisphenols in materials that come into contact with food. The European Parliament and Council now also need to greenlight the proposal, so that it can officially become EU law.   

The Member States’ decision comes after decades of scientific alerts on the health harms of several bisphenols and of Europe-wide civil society mobilisation to demand stricter regulation. This protection measure is much needed but it took the European Commission and Member States long to act, leaving consumers unnecessarily exposed for years. foodwatch offices in Germany and Austria  have been playing their part in the broad civil society mobilisation effort to obtain this commitment for a ban.

According to the European Environment Agency (EEA), people’s exposure to Bisphenol A exceeds safety levels, while the European Chemicals Agency (ECHA) estimates that the uses of over 30 bisphenols should be restricted due to their health effects. 

The long-awaited ban of BPA in most food contact materials is an important milestone, but Europe needs to step up the pace of restriction on all bisphenols of concern across their uses to genuinely increase the protection of consumers!
Natacha Cingotti International Senior Campaigns Strategist

All bisphenols of concern should be banned

Bisphenols are widely used for the production of plastics and resins. Bisphenol A is the most famous chemical substance of the family and one of the most extensively studied chemicals in the world. It is a well-known toxicant for reproduction and endocrine disruptor for human health and the environment, owing it a place on the EU’s blacklist of harmful chemicals (the REACH list of substances of very high concern, which are meant to be phased out from use in Europe due to their harmful properties). 

Such properties explain why scientists and civil society groups have long called for the drastic restriction of the substance. Over the last years, a growing number of scientific studies have also raised alarm on the harmful potential of other bisphenols, which have been increasingly used as a replacement to bisphenol A. 

Regulatory authorities have started to classify these substances for their harmful properties, but the slow pace of regulatory action on a chemical-by-chemical basis has called for the introduction of group-based regulations. Germany attempted to initiate a group restriction for bisphenols under the European flagship chemical regulation REACH in 2022 but the proposal was subsequently withdrawn. 

The proposal for a ban in food contact materials agreed by Member States:

  • Bans the use of Bisphenol A as well as other bisphenols with a harmonized classification as carcinogenic, mutagenic, or reprotoxic (CMR) 1a or 1b, or endocrine disrupting 1 under the EU Regulation on classification, labelling and packaging of chemicals (Regulation 1272/2008), for instance Bisphenol S or Bisphenol AF, in food contact materials with some exceptions for certain applications. It will mostly affect packaging (such as coating on cans), single use plastics, reusable plastic items such as drinking bottles, water coolers, kitchenware.
  • It foresees a general transition period of 18 months for single food contact materials and a longer period of 36 months for canned fish, fruit, and vegetables and the outside packaging of food cans.
     

EFSA updated scientific opinion

While scientific evidence on the harm potential of Bisphenol A has accumulated over the decades, the trigger for the restriction potential is the updated scientific opinion of the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) on the substance, which acknowledges the existing scientific evidence of the health harm of BPA, and particularly highlights the potential harm to the immune system. An important signal of this acknowledgement is the lowering of the so-called safe level of exposure to the substance - the tolerable daily intake (TDI) - in 2020, with a 20,000-fold decrease compared to the 2015 agreed value (from 4 micrograms per kilogram of body weight per day to 0.2 nanograms per kilogram of body weight per day).
 

Sources and further information