France Implements Food Contact Ban on BPA in Thermal Paper

According to a report this past week by Food Production Daily, Crawley, U.K., France has claimed BPA contained in thermal coating layers toxically migrates to the fingers or any objects in contact with it. The ban is expected to affect top coated thermal paper sales or "protected thermal paper" used in adhesive labels for food packaging, for example.

According to sources quoted by Food Production Daily, the French ban is only for food packaging. Thermal paper is used in many applications such as point-of-sales (POS) tickets, self-adhesive labels, lottery tickets, and fax paper. The French would like to extend the ban to the entire EU and encourage other countries to consider BPA toxic and ban it altogether. However, this legislation’s jurisdiction is within France and is not related to the overall effort by European environmentalists for EU legislation who argue BPA’s toxicity when in contact with humans is unacceptable, and an alternative must be found.

Substitution methods are being sought and testing is underway. At least one company claims to have formulated a BPA-free thermal paper system that has been in use since 2000, but at the time this article was written that claim could not be substantiated.