Widespread consumer demand for plastic products that are free of the hormone-disrupting chemical bisphenol-A (BPA) has led to some significant positive changes in the way that food, beverage and water containers are manufactured. But a new study out of Germany has found that thousands of other potentially harmful chemicals are still leeching from plastic products into food and beverages, including an endocrine-disrupting chemical (EDC) known as di(2-ethylhexyl) fumarate, or DEHF, that is completely unregulated.

Martin Wagner and his colleague, Jorg Oehlmann, from the Goethe University Frankfurt, in conjunction with a team of researchers from the German Federal Institute of Hydrology, learned this after conducting tests on 18 different bottled water products to look for the presence of EDCs. Using an advanced combination of bioassay work and high-resolution mass spectrometry, the team identified some 24,520 different chemicals present in the tested water.

But of major concern, and the apparent underpinning of the study’s findings, was DEHF, a plasticizer chemical that is used to make plastic bottles more flexible. According to reports, DEHF was clearly identified in the tested water as the most consistent and obvious culprit causing anti-estrogenic activity. Despite trace amounts of more than 24,000 other potentially damaging chemicals, DEHF stood out […]