This blog post was developed to highlight key insights shared by PFAS expert Emanuele Sozzi during a recent presentation. The content reflects and expands upon topics discussed in that session for a broader audience.
PFAS can enter the food system through multiple pathways. Potential sources include contaminated water and ingredients, processing environments, food-contact materials, and waste streams that return persistent PFAS to the environment.
Replacing legacy PFAS requires more than a one-for-one substitution. A newer or shorter-chain PFAS may behave differently, but that does not automatically make it safer, more effective, or easier to measure.
Food and beverage companies need defensible data to act with confidence. A decision-driven testing strategy can help companies identify likely sources, assess alternatives, and support regulatory, legal, and reputational decisions.
Most people prepare a meal without wondering how persistent chemicals might have entered their food. But it is not an unreasonable question to ask. Breakfast, for example, could contain PFAS in dairy milk if the cows that produced it consumed contaminated water. The jug holding the milk or the packaging around cereal could also contain traces of PFAS from materials or manufacturing processes. Potential exposure pathways are often invisible to consumers and difficult for companies to trace.
Per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, or PFAS, are a large group of man-made chemicals used for decades because of their resistance to water, grease, and heat. They are often called “forever chemicals” because they do not break down easily in nature. Some PFAS have been linked to adverse health outcomes, including endocrine disruption, cancer, and metabolic changes.
For food and beverage companies, these varied exposure pathways create a complex risk-management problem. PFAS may be intentionally used in some packaging, coatings, or processing materials, but they may also enter a product unintentionally through ingredients, water, equipment, supplier materials, or environmental contamination.
PFAS were once viewed primarily as a drinking water or industrial-site issue, but researchers now recognize that PFAS can affect the entire food product lifecycle. Potential pathways include:
A key reason PFAS can move through so many pathways lies in their chemistry. PFAS contain a fluorinated carbon backbone, known as a fluoroalkyl chain, in which hydrogen atoms are partially or completely replaced by fluorine atoms. This creates a carbon-fluorine bond, one of the strongest bonds in chemistry. The strength of this bond makes PFAS highly resistant to degradation by natural physical, chemical, and biological processes.
This persistence means PFAS released at one point in the product lifecycle may remain in water, soil, or waste streams and later make their way back into the food supply through ingredients, livestock, processing water, or packaging materials.
PFAS also differ from many other food-safety concerns in several important ways:
Together, these properties make PFAS difficult to manage as a single contaminant. Companies must consider multiple sources, thousands of individual compounds, persistent environmental pathways, and important differences in how PFAS behave and can be measured.
Companies may encounter PFAS in two broad ways: as unintended contamination entering through the supply chain, or as intentionally used substances in packaging, coatings, processing materials, or other product components. The second pathway creates a particular challenge when companies seek replacements that provide similar performance without introducing new risks.
Removing PFAS from kitchen items, packaging, and food-related materials can present challenges for food companies and manufacturers. Consumers and customers expect products to retain characteristics that PFAS traditionally helped provide, such as grease resistance, water resistance, heat resistance, or nonstick performance.
Replacing one PFAS with another, however, can create a “whack-a-mole” problem: one compound is banned or phased out, only to be replaced by another with similar characteristics that are not yet fully understood or regulated. These replacements are sometimes described as “regrettable substitutions.”
Legacy PFAS include older compounds with widespread historical use, many of which are long-chain PFAS. Long-chain PFAS generally have fluoroalkyl chains of seven or more carbon atoms, while short-chain PFAS generally have four to six and ultra-short-chain PFAS have one to three. Shorter-chain compounds have been used as replacements in applications such as industrial coatings, food packaging, and textile and paper finishing.
Chain length is useful for describing chemical structure, but it is not by itself a measure of safety or suitability. Some shorter-chain PFAS may be less bioaccumulative than certain legacy PFAS, yet they may provide different performance, remain persistent or mobile in the environment, raise unresolved health and environmental questions, and be difficult to detect using standard analytical methods.
Evaluating a replacement therefore requires more than comparing chain length. Companies need to ask at least three separate questions: Does the material provide the required performance? Does it meaningfully reduce potential health and environmental concerns? And can available testing methods reliably detect and characterize it?
Avoiding regrettable substitution requires evidence. Companies need data not only to determine whether PFAS are present, but also to identify likely sources, compare alternatives, evaluate supplier or material changes, and document why a decision represents a meaningful reduction in risk.
Companies may know that certain packaging, coatings, or processing materials were designed using PFAS. But PFAS may also enter products through less visible pathways, including ingredients, supplier materials, processing environments, impurities, or environmental contamination. Laboratory testing can help determine where PFAS are present, at what concentrations, and whether changes to materials or suppliers have reduced potential exposure.
The appropriate testing strategy depends on the decision a company needs to make. Screening a product for known PFAS, tracing a contamination source, validating a supplier change, and comparing replacement materials may require different analytical methods and levels of evidence.
Measuring a small number of well-known PFAS compounds in water or water-based beverages is relatively straightforward. Analyzing those compounds in more complex food matrices, such as dairy products, juices, infant formula, meat, seafood, or grain-based foods, can be significantly more challenging and costly because fats, proteins, solids, and other components may interfere with measurement.
The challenge increases when companies consider the broader PFAS universe. If thousands of PFAS exist, how much effort should a company invest in compounds that are not currently regulated but may become a future concern? Testing every possible compound may not be feasible. Companies therefore need a risk-based strategy that prioritizes likely exposure pathways, relevant materials and suppliers, applicable regulatory requirements, and the decisions the results must support.
Testing a product for PFAS is only the beginning of the decision-making process. The objective is to generate reliable data that can withstand scientific, regulatory, legal, and public scrutiny. If a company cannot confidently explain how its data were generated and what the results do and do not mean, it cannot confidently defend the decisions based on those data.
Defensible PFAS data are generated using methods suited to the sample and the decision, supported by documented quality controls, and interpreted within the method’s limitations.
Before relying on PFAS results to change a supplier, reformulate a product, communicate with customers, or support a regulatory decision, food and beverage companies should ask five questions about how the data were generated and interpreted.
Companies need a practical framework to identify likely PFAS sources, prioritize risks, select fit-for-purpose testing, evaluate alternatives, and interpret the resulting data. This approach can help companies make informed decisions and build confidence that replacement materials are not simply different, but meaningfully reduce risk.
RTI offers technical expertise and services ranging from laboratory testing to the development of PFAS substitutes. Our expertise addresses the full range of the PFAS problem, including testing, assessment, remediation, and alternatives. We use scientific evidence and a systems-level approach to help organizations navigate the PFAS landscape, reduce supply-chain risk, and evaluate safer alternatives.
Learn more about RTI’s PFAS solutions and sign up for The Growth Brief to receive insights in your inbox.
