Using tea bags and spice pouches may produce good tea and tasty dishes, but people should use them with care to prevent harmful effects, the Consumer Protection Commission said yesterday.
The commission urged the Department of Health to amend regulatory standards for food and utensil packaging to protect public health.
A recent test of 30 items by the commission all met the “Sanitation Standards for Food and Utensil Packaging,” but the results were still worrisome because the regulatory standards do not take into account Taiwanese cooking habits, said Wu Cheng-hsueh (吳政學), a section chief at the commission.
Of the 30 items, 22 used plastic packaging and the other eight used paper.
The plastic packagings did not contain lead or cadmium solutes and their potassium permanganate levels of 1.1mg per liter to 7.9mg per liter were well within the legal limit of 10mg per liter, the commission said.
Neither were there traces of plasticizers, including Di(2-ethylhexyl) phthalate (DEHP), di-n-butyl phthalate (DBP), diisodecyl phthalate (DIDP), diisononyl phthalate (DINP), butylbenzyl phthalate (BBP) and di-octyl phthalate (DOP) — in the packaging, it said.
The six chemicals were targeted because of the plasticizer scare that rattled the nation in May.
Current standards for plastic packaging stipulate that the packaging should not emit solutions containing lead or cadmium when cooked for 30 minutes at 95oC, nor plasticizers such as DEHP or DBP when cooked for an hour at 25oC.
The eight paper packaging products did not contain traces of optical brightening agents (OBA) or formaldehyde, the commission added.
Paper packaging regulations state that there should be no traces of OBA when the product is placed in liquid at or more than 95oC for more than 30 minutes.
However, the commission expressed concern over the fact that Taiwanese dishes are usually cooked over a matter of hours, which may result in elevated levels of the chemicals.
“We have already recommended that the Department of Health consider amending sanitation standards to take into account Taiwanese cooking habits,” Wu said.
The commission said it also found that the tags that come with tea bags or spice pouches are usually not labeled as part of the packaging. A casual test of the tags according to the standards of the Sanitation Standards for Food and Utensil Packaging yielded 11.7 parts per million (parts per million) of potassium permanganate, exceeding the legal amount.
Users of tea bags and coffee bags should avoid dropping or placing the tags in the water, the commission said.
The plastic packaging found in 22 of the 30 samples is a departure from the common expectation that spice pouches are wrapped in cloth or paper bags, the commission said, adding that it had recommended the department consider regulating material specification for foodstuff packaging being steeped or cooked at high temperatures.
Translated by Jake Chung, Staff writer
A group of Taiwanese-American and Tibetan-American students at Harvard University on Saturday disrupted Chinese Ambassador to the US Xie Feng’s (謝鋒) speech at the school, accusing him of being responsible for numerous human rights violations. Four students — two Taiwanese Americans and two from Tibet — held up banners inside a conference hall where Xie was delivering a speech at the opening ceremony of the Harvard Kennedy School China Conference 2024. In a video clip provided by the Coalition of Students Resisting the CCP (Chinese Communist Party), Taiwanese-American Cosette Wu (吳亭樺) and Tibetan-American Tsering Yangchen are seen holding banners that together read:
UNAWARE: Many people sit for long hours every day and eat unhealthy foods, putting them at greater risk of developing one of the ‘three highs,’ an expert said More than 30 percent of adults aged 40 or older who underwent a government-funded health exam were unaware they had at least one of the “three highs” — high blood pressure, high blood lipids or high blood sugar, the Health Promotion Administration (HPA) said yesterday. Among adults aged 40 or older who said they did not have any of the “three highs” before taking the health exam, more than 30 percent were found to have at least one of them, Adult Preventive Health Examination Service data from 2022 showed. People with long-term medical conditions such as hypertension or diabetes usually do not
POLICE INVESTIGATING: A man said he quit his job as a nurse at Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital as he had been ‘disgusted’ by the behavior of his colleagues A man yesterday morning wrote online that he had witnessed nurses taking photographs and touching anesthetized patients inappropriately in Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital’s operating theaters. The man surnamed Huang (黃) wrote on the Professional Technology Temple bulletin board that during his six-month stint as a nurse at the hospital, he had seen nurses taking pictures of patients, including of their private parts, after they were anesthetized. Some nurses had also touched patients inappropriately and children were among those photographed, he said. Huang said this “disgusted” him “so much” that “he felt the need to reveal these unethical acts in the operating theater
Heat advisories were in effect for nine administrative regions yesterday afternoon as warm southwesterly winds pushed temperatures above 38°C in parts of southern Taiwan, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. As of 3:30pm yesterday, Tainan’s Yujing District (玉井) had recorded the day’s highest temperature of 39.7°C, though the measurement will not be included in Taiwan’s official heat records since Yujing is an automatic rather than manually operated weather station, the CWA said. Highs recorded in other areas were 38.7°C in Kaohsiung’s Neimen District (內門), 38.2°C in Chiayi City and 38.1°C in Pingtung’s Sandimen Township (三地門), CWA data showed. The spell of scorching