PETrecycling CZ is non-commercial, independent, free & unsponsored Czech web portal for funs, communities, administrative, law-makers, politicians, PET plastic industry etc. in the Czech Republic.

My closing statement read: "There is only one real effective and incentive method to encourage environmentally sound collecting of beverage one-way containers and it is deposit in combination with High-Tech R&D resulted Reverse Vending Machines!"

By Charlotte Eyre
Controversial study links PET bottles with EDCs

A new study suggesting that PET bottles leach endocrine disrupting chemicals (EDC) into water, and potentially pose a risk to human health, has been criticised by industry association Plastics Europe and the Germany’s BfR (German Federal Institute for Risk Assessment).

In the study ‘Endocrine disrupters in bottled mineral water: total estrogenic burden and migration from plastic bottles’, scientists at Goethe University looked at the presence of EDCs - hormonally active chemicals - in mineral water products.

Researchers Martin Wagner and Jörg Oehlmann say they analysed 20 brands of mineral water: nine bottled in PET, nine in glass and the other two in TetraPaks (which have a PE liner). Using a yeast estrogen screen (YES), the pair identified estrogenic activity in seven plastic bottles and both TetraPak containers, but in only three of the nine glass bottles.

“This gives rise to the assumption that additives such as plasticisers or catalysts migrate from the plastic packaging into the foodstuff,” say the study authors. “Though yet unidentified, these substances act as functionally active estrogens in vitro on the human estrogen alpha and in-vivo in a molluskan model.”

The study did not focus on single chemicals but on the overall hormonal activity of the mineral waters under examination.

Wagner and Oehlmann suggest the high level of EDCs in PET bottles may be linked to the leaching of chemical additives or plasticisers from the PET, quoting earlier studies which have claimed to have found endocrine-disrupting phthalates in PET food packaging.

One study said it had extracted several phthalates from PET water bottles, including DEHP, DBP and DEP, while another found DMP, DEP and DBP in water products after they had been stored in PET bottles for 10 weeks. In a recent study, scientists compared mineral waters bottled in glass and PET and detected significantly higher amounts of phthalates (DMP, DEP, DiBP, DBP, and DEHP) in plastic bottled water, says Oehlmann.

However, Wagner and Oehlmann stress that further studies are needed before concluding that PET water bottles pose a real risk to human health.

“We are cautious with such an interpretation since we have no information about the uptake and elimination of the compounds in the human body,” says Oehlmann. “Still, our results demonstrate that the exposure to estrogen-like chemicals may be much higher than known so far.”

The study has been dismissed by plastics industry association PlasticsEurope. Its consumer and environmental affairs specialist Mike Neal said that PET is safe.

“This study is flawed and there’s a lot of private comment among scientists who work in this field saying that it has not been done well,” he told European Plastics News. “It isn’t possible for that level of hormones to be in PET, so for these scientists to say it comes from packaging is wrong.”

Neal says the plastics industry is always willing to speak to scientists before they publish any material relating to plastics. “This is not about us influencing their work, we just want to make sure they get it right first time,” he says. “The public accept these stories that do great harm to the industry.”

The German Federal Institute for Risk Assessment (BfR) also dismisses the study. “The results do not permit any conclusions about the origin of substances with hormone-like activity from PET bottles,” it concludes.

BfR said there would, therefore, have to be high substance concentrations in PET to trigger the oestrogen activities mentioned in the study. It concluded this does not seem plausible given what is known about PET.

“BfR is of the opinion that consumers need not refrain from consumer mineral water from PET bottles on the basis of the study results,” it concludes.