PET Bottles Do Not Leach Cancerous Chemicals: CSIR

MUMBAI, 10 AUG 2019:

Water stored in PET bottles does not cause endocrine disruption, the Council of Scientific & Industrial Research (CSIR) has said in a study. Simply put, the study says that PET does not affect a person’s hormone-secreting glands, which means it is not cancerous.

CSIR made its report on PET, or polyethylene terephthalate, based on a comprehensive study on male and female rats. The study was on whether water in PET bottles or food in PET packaging get contaminated with toxic substances like heavy metals (ie, lead and mercury) and phthalates (a chemical found in many plastics). “All specific migrations of such substances into simulants (all types of acidic, alkaline or fatty foods) were found to be not only below their permissible limits, but were found to be even below their detection limits,” the summary of the study report stated.

“The equipment used for the study (NMR, or nuclear magnetic resonance, and ELISA, or enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay) are capable of showing the presence of molecules at the minutest levels (units per billion),” said an official.

PET Packaging Association for Clean Environment (PACE) approached CSIR in June 2016 for an examination of PET packaging. “Considering the expertise available with CSIR and our constituent Central Food Technological Research Institute (CFTRI), we readily accepted the challenge,” said KSMS Raghavarao, director of CSIR-CFTRI, Mysuru, in his preface to the study report. According to CSIR DG Dr Shekhar Mande, the findings are more relevant than standalone tests and would set food packaging quality benchmarks. ET Healthworld