Pizza Boxes Are Toxic? You Have Got To Be Shitting Me
Gothamist- Pizza boxes are functional, collectable, customizable, recyclable and now: toxic. More specifically, three types of chemicals used to produce pizza boxes and other food packaging have been found to be toxic to humans, resulting in cancer and birth defects. Three types of perfluoroalkyl ethyl are set to be banned by the FDA, who have declared there is “no longer reasonable certainty” that harm does not come from exposure to these chemicals.
The chemicals used to create the containers act as a sealant to protect the packaging from being soaked with oil or water during transport—and they’re prolific. In addition to some pizza boxes, the chemicals can also be found in microwave popcorn bags and food packaged for both humans and animals.
Oh what the hell, now the packaging of great food can kill you? I am still coming to grips with hot dogs and bacon apparently being cancer factories. But this is absolute hogwash. I could live with microwave popcorn being toxic because that is one of those “too good to be true” foods. Toss it in the microwave for a couple of minutes and out comes this delicious, tasty treat. Unless you didn’t cook it long enough or burnt it, which happened 99% of the time for me unless I stood outside the microwave like a goon and did the whole “wait for two seconds between pops” method. But if you told me microwave popcorn butter was actually just liquid cancer, I legit wouldn’t bat an eyelash.
Then again, this may end up being a good thing. Pizza’s Achilles heel has long been that it is significantly better at the pizzeria than it is after you bring it home in a box. If the good people in the pizza industry can figure out how to make a box that keeps the crispiness and flavor in the pizza, all the toxins in my body would have been worth it in the name of science. Hell, they can even keep some of the toxic chemicals in there if it helps make good pizza. We are all going to die anyway. We might as well just enjoy our time on Earth.