Toxin Series "2": PHTHALATES Are In Fast Food Too!

📊 A 2021 George Washington University study found toxic chemicals in popular fast food items like chicken nuggets, burritos, and more from McDonald’s, Burger King, Pizza Hut, Domino’s, Taco Bell, and Chipotle in the U.S.

🧪 Researchers detected 10 out of 11 potentially harmful chemicals, including phthalates—a group used to soften plastics, known to disrupt the endocrine system and linked to serious health issues.

🔄 The team also identified replacement plasticizers—chemicals now being used instead of banned or restricted phthalates in food packaging and processing equipment.

🍽️ These plasticizers were widespread in prepared foods from fast food chains, meaning customers are unknowingly consuming unhealthy chemicals with their meals.

📍 Researchers gathered 64 fast food items (hamburgers, fries, nuggets, burritos, cheese pizza) from six major chains in San Antonio, Texas, testing for 11 types of phthalates and plasticizers and found:

🔬 81% of the food samples contained the phthalate DnBP, and 70% contained DEHP, both linked to fertility, reproductive, and childhood behavioral disorders.

⚠️ 86% of foods had the replacement plasticizer DEHT, which still requires more research on health impacts.

🍔 Foods with meat (e.g., cheeseburgers, chicken burritos) showed higher chemical levels.

🧤 Chicken burritos and cheeseburgers had the highest DEHT levels—also found in food handling gloves.

🍕 Cheese pizzas had the lowest levels of the tested chemicals.

Phthalates and replacement plasticizers are chemicals used to make plastics soft and can migrate out of plastics into the food, which is ingested. Some sources of plastics include food handling gloves, industrial tubing, food conveyor belts and the outer packaging used to wrap fast food meals available in restaurants.

Previous research suggests that people who eat home cooked food have lower levels of these chemicals in their bodies, probably because home cooks do not use food handling gloves industrial plastics.

Story Source provided by George Washington University.