In May 2022, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) summarily denied a petition filed back in 2016 urging the agency to ban the use of phthalates in food-contact materials. These plasticizers have been safely utilized for five decades to make hundreds of plastic products, including some food packaging, more flexible and durable. But the petitioners insisted that phthalate exposure is harmful. The FDA’s response was unequivocal:
“…[W]e do not have a basis to conclude that dietary exposure levels from approved ortho -phthalates exceed a safe level.
Led by the litigious activist group EarthJustice, the petitioners almost immediately requested the FDA to reconsider its determination. The agency refused their request in July 2023, again explaining that the best available evidence did not support the petition:
“In sum, we concluded that the … information contained in and relied upon by your Original Petition …did not set forth a sufficient showing that the scientific evidence supports amending our regulations to prohibit the use of these substances…”
If this is the first you’re hearing of the FDA’s back-to-back determinations that phthalates in food packaging don’t threaten public health, it’s because the legacy media all but ignored the agency’s conclusions.
The obvious follow-up question is, why?
Phthalates are certainly newsworthy. In just the last year, more than 1,600 stories about these chemicals—roughly 10 pages of Google search results—have been published. Indeed, The New York Times and CNN wrote detailed articles in 2020 about phthalate plasticizers; both stories gave phthalate opponents free reign to mislead the public with unsupported claims and accuse the FDA of refusing to protect children from supposedly dangerous substances.
Three years later, after the FDA twice scrutinized the petitioners’ claims and found them wanting, the press suddenly has nothing to say on the topic. This isn’t a simple oversight, it’s a gross breach of journalistic ethics. “The purpose of journalism,” the American Press Institute declares, “is … to provide citizens with the information they need to make the best possible decisions about their lives, their communities, their societies, and their governments.”
The media’s failure to meet the basic expectations of their profession in this case prompts a troubling hypothetical question: had the FDA agreed with the petitioners, do you think those same news outlets would have stayed silent? We think not.
By writing alarmist stories based on cherry-picked studies, and dismissing the FDA’s final determination, these publications withheld vital food-safety information from the public—leaving them to fear a risk that doesn’t actually exist. Americans deserve much better.