It is worth noting that "voluntary" rarely truly means voluntary in this context. More likely @US_FDA , which did its own damning studies on 6:2 FTOH (a #PFAS chemical) earlier this year, threatened regulatory action and industry chose to abandon the chemical instead https://twitter.com/MelanieBenesh/status/1289207253497556999

My colleague @dqasci looked at the @US_FDA 6:2 FTOH #PFAS studies earlier this year. Of concern is not just the toxicity of 6:2 FTOH but the chemicals it breaks down into inside the body. https://www.ewg.org/news-and-analysis/2020/03/fda-studies-short-chain-pfas-chemicals-more-toxic-previously-thought

As Dave notes, industry only submitted science on one breakdown product, PFHxA. Industry likes to point to PFHxA as a "safe" #PFAS because it passes through the body more quickly than other PFAS. That doesn't mean PFHxA isn't toxic...but that's another thread

Anyway, because industry gave FDA information only about PFHxA when requesting authorization to use 6:2 FTOH, that's what FDA relied on when granting authorization.

But when @US_FDA did its own studies, it found that there are OTHER breakdown products from 6:2 FTOH that present more serious toxicity concerns. Information that industry did not provide.

As stated above, I suspect (and I am speculating!) that FDA went to industry with its own science and threatened regulation and that industry, rather than fighting pending regulation, chose to abandon 6:2 FTOH

The way we regulate food packaging is very broken. But the law itself has a very high safety standard "reasonable certainty of no harm." It would be hard for industry to show that 6:2 FTOH (and other #PFAS for that matter) meet this threshold once the reg process is underway

Industry gains two things by abandoning 6:2 FTOH. 1) It looks like the good guy. 2) The @US_FDA will no longer have any reason to make a safety finding. So the story is that 6:2 FTOH was abandoned, not that industry was putting an unsafe product in the food system. #PFAS

So if you look at the whole context, what may look like a story of industry responsibility is actually still a story of industry deception #PFAS

And most troubling part of this story is that agencies like @US_FDA and @EPA generally don't have the resources to conduct their own independent science on the substances they regulate. But if FDA hadn't done its own studies, it's unlikely that 6:2 FTOH would be on its way out

Agencies are incredibly reliant on industry-generated data when it comes to approving new substances. Our whole chemical regulatory system is largely built on what industry choses to disclose. As this story shows, too often they are not forthright