Around 10,000 chemicals are allowed in our food and food packaging – and some of these can harm our health.

With each meal, we are also consuming multiple different chemicals. But, when the FDA decides whether or not to approve an additive to food, the agency (along with the food industry) aren’t considering the combined health effect of the new additive with similar chemicals already in our diet.

For example: several chemicals present in many common foods keep the thyroid from making the hormone needed for brain development. But the effects of these related chemicals from various sources aren’t considered together, even though they all impact the thyroid. This puts pregnant women and young children at particular risk of too much exposure that could harm brain development.

Will you join us in demanding the FDA ensure food chemicals do not harm our health? Add your name today!

Over 60 years ago, Congress passed a law requiring that FDA and industry consider the cumulative effect of chemicals on our health and safety when allowing new chemicals in food. But that’s not happening.

An EDF investigation of nearly 900 safety determinations – submitted by companies making new additives – found that only one followed through on this legal requirement to consider these combined effects, and FDA didn’t raise objections with this major shortcoming.

It shouldn’t be our responsibility to know what and how many chemicals we eat every day. We should be able to trust that the Food and Drug Administration is ensuring that what we put in our bodies is safe. But the agency is shirking its duty.

That’s why EDF and other health and safety organizations submitted a formal petition calling on FDA to follow the law and evaluate the combined toxic effects of similar chemicals before allowing them in our food.

Voice your support now for the petition and demand FDA follow the law to protect our health from harmful chemicals in food.

Thank you for standing with us,

Sam Parry
Director of Membership