When the lawyer entrusted by Dong Jinshi went to the court to file the case, the judge was shocked after reading the complaint, "We use lunch boxes like this every day and never thought there would be any problems. This case must be Hurry up and set it up for him.”

The lunch box they are talking about is the disposable white plastic lunch box we are familiar with every day. In mid-March 2010, Dong Jinshi's non-governmental environmental protection organization consumed and packaged the lunch boxes at two famous restaurants in Beijing, "Laobian Dumplings" and "Donglaishun Shabu-Shabu Mutton", and then sent the lunch boxes to a professional inspection agency for testing.

The test results are shocking: Although the lunch boxes used by the two restaurants are produced by different manufacturers, the test results show that their n-hexane evaporation residue exceeds the national standard by 20 times, while the acetic acid evaporation residue exceeds the standard by nearly 150 times. times. This means that if this kind of lunch box is used to hold food containing oil and vinegar for a long time, people will "eat 1/3 of the lunch box."

“Normally, people always pay attention to the safety of the food itself, but rarely pay attention to the packaging of the food.” Dong Jinshi said. Recently, he took the two hotels to court. In an interview, he also pointed out that not only disposable lunch boxes, but also the paper cups, plastic cups and mineral water bottles we usually use may contain hidden disease risks.

This expert in the field of food packaging and environmental protection has been fighting these "invisible poisons" for 10 years. Regarding those low-quality food packages that people come into contact with frequently, Dong Jinshi commented that they are as harmful as taking drugs.

Invisible poisons that are "eaten"

To understand how terrible it is to "eat 1/3 of the lunch box", we must first know that we eat those poisons that are dissolved in the food , what on earth is it.

Scientific testing can help us answer this question. During the test of lunch boxes at the Beijing Physical and Chemical Analysis and Testing Center, the staff soaked the lunch box samples in a solution of n-hexane and acetic acid for a period of time, then took them out, evaporated the solution, and weighed the remaining residue. Determine how much of the substance in the lunch box may be dissolved in the food. Among them, n-hexane simulates cooking oil, while acetic acid simulates vinegar, which are ingredients that often appear in daily packaged foods.

In an ideal world, disposable lunch boxes should be made of high-purity polypropylene plastic. This is a translucent round particle like rice. It is highly flexible and can withstand high temperatures. It will not react chemically when soaked in a solution of n-hexane and acetic acid. But in actual production, people will add a certain proportion of calcium carbonate and talcum powder to pure polypropylene as "fillers" in addition to the main ingredients.

In nature, the most common state of calcium carbonate is "stone". In the raw materials produced in factories, due to the higher purity, its appearance becomes a thin and short white color like small chalk. solid. It is precisely because of their addition that the color of some disposable lunch boxes has changed from transparent to white.

According to national regulations, the proportion of fillers in raw materials cannot exceed 20%. But the fact is that the proportion of calcium carbonate in some manufacturers' raw materials exceeds half, and some "even exceed 80."

However, it is impossible to create a flexible and waterproof lunch box using only these chalk-like powders. Therefore, workers also need to add paraffin wax and industrial waste plastic as supplements to the raw materials. Among them, paraffin is a white solid block like a candle, and industrial waste plastic is small brown particles. If you get closer, you can smell a pungent smell.

The source of these industrial waste plastics may be factory scraps, recycled old plastics, or even medical waste. They are mixed together, melted, extruded into long strips, and cut into fine particles. This raw material, which was originally never allowed to be used in the food industry, was eventually made into meal boxes, filled with meals and delivered to us, and even eaten by us.

Dong Jinshi said that according to the test results, the substances dissolved in the acetic acid and n-hexane solution included "some carcinogenic components in industrial calcium carbonate and industrial paraffin." This is what we "eat" from the lunch box.

Among these ingredients, industrial calcium carbonate may affect the body's metabolic system and form gallstones and kidney stones. The heavy metal impurities contained in it may also threaten the health of the human digestive tract and nervous system. As for the polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons contained in paraffin, it will affect the human body's hematopoietic system, nervous system and digestive system, accumulate toxicity, and induce cancer.

China consumes 15 billion disposable lunch boxes every year, and “the pass rate is less than half”

Nowadays, it is not easy to avoid such “dirty lunch boxes” things. As the secretary-general of the International Food Packaging Association, Dong Jinshi said that "less than half of the disposable lunch boxes currently on the market pass the test."

As for the calculation process of this ratio, Dong Jinshi explained that only about half of the manufacturers that produce lunch boxes nationwide have obtained industrial and commercial and health licenses. In his daily investigations, he found that some companies would restart illegally producing substandard products after obtaining licenses.

More importantly, in actual sales, substandard products occupy the majority of the market share. This market situation once again affects the pass rate data.

“Profit is the only problem.” Dong Jinshi believes. He made a calculation: If he produces high-quality lunch boxes and uses food-grade polypropylene resin raw materials, the price of each ton of raw materials will be 11,000 yuan. The price of industrial waste plastic is 5,000 yuan per ton, and inferior industrial calcium carbonate filler is even cheaper, only 2,000 yuan per ton. After conversion, the cost of black heart lunch boxes can be saved by half, and there is greater profit margin.

Although from a quality point of view, high-quality lunch boxes have incomparable advantages: because of the high purity of polypropylene, such lunch boxes are strong, non-leakable and have low health hazards. Dong Jinshi even made up a jingle to explain how to identify inferior lunch boxes: "It's soft to the touch, breaks if you tear it lightly, it's pungent to the nose and chokes the eyes, it deforms when exposed to heat and leaks, it sinks in the water once it's broken, There will be a white mark..."

But for those consumers who buy lunch boxes - restaurants, compared to quality and safety, price is often the most important factor they consider. As a result, low-priced and inferior black-hearted lunch boxes have gained the upper hand again and again, squeezing out most of the market share. Dong Jinshi even couldn't help complaining that Beijing's market was "almost monopolized by bad lunch boxes."

He has seen the production process of "Black Heart Lunch Boxes" in many cities. In Tongzhou District, Beijing, in a smoky small factory, the environment was dirty and messy, and the air was filled with a pungent smell. . "A company that has not even obtained a license will certainly not pay attention to hygienic conditions."

Data released by the "International Food Packaging Association" shows that China consumes 150 disposable lunch boxes every year. Billions. If the pass rate estimated by Dong Jinshi is used, this means that more than 7.5 billion "black heart lunch boxes" are consumed every year.

Food packaging is not food, but the production standards should be the same as food

Since the proliferation of counterfeit environmentally friendly lunch boxes in 2001, Dong Jinshi has devoted himself to exposing the "hidden poison" of food packaging. He has been persisting in his career for 10 years now. However, it is the first time for him to take legal action on quality issues like this year.

"There is no way, because other methods really don't work." Dong Jinshi said.

At first, he would complain to the quality supervision department, but the other party always advised him to wait because there were "more serious quality issues that were too busy to deal with." Later, he began to find the media, and invited reporters to conduct secret visits together, and then exposed them together. But after the reporters leave, these factories will restart work, and the previous "work was in vain."

Dong Jinshi found that although it is not too difficult to distinguish low-quality "black heart packaging", compared with the food eaten directly into the mouth, people are not always aware of the safety of food packaging. Pay attention to. "Food packaging is not food, but its production standards should be treated the same as food." Dong Jinshi said.

He has seen some factories that crush used optical discs, clean them with sulfuric acid, and dry them. During this process, the workers would step barefoot on the ground where the plastic fragments were drying. In the end, these plastic fragments were turned into baby bottles.

He even once discovered in a factory that used recycled pulp to make disposable paper cups that there were blood stains left by sanitary napkins in the pulp tank.

At the end of last year, seven departments including the Ministry of Health issued the "Notice on Carrying out the Cleanup of Food Packaging Materials", which clearly stipulated the "list of substances that can be used in food packaging materials" and "the list of substances that are prohibited from being used in food packaging materials". list of substances”. This once made Dong Jinshi excitedly evaluate it as "an earthquake in the packaging industry", but now he found that many factories still insist on producing "black-hearted packaging" using the excuse of "not hearing about it". Even the industrial and commercial and quality supervision departments in some areas excused themselves as “not knowing”.

This graduate of the Chinese Academy of Sciences majoring in environmental chemistry gradually understood that these illegal factories were far more complicated than the environmental knowledge he had learned. Sometimes, when the front-foot inspector leaves, the back-foot factory continues to operate; sometimes, because someone "tips off the information," the law enforcement team will be blocked at the closed gate of the factory, and the sound of production inside can be heard, but even after entering Can't open the door.

“To truly promote food packaging, we must not only improve the law, but also ensure the implementation of the existing system.” Dong Jinshi said. According to his vision, this requires further heavy investment from the state and joint action by the health, quality inspection, and industry and commerce departments.

In fact, as the Secretary-General of the International Food Packaging Association, Dong Jinshi’s efforts are not without selfish motives. His member companies often complain that qualified tableware cannot be sold at all and the profit margins are too small. One of his purposes in repeatedly reporting rogue tableware factories is to regain the squeezed market for these member companies.

He will also work hard to publicize through the media, hoping that everyone will buy food packaging with certified quality: "The 'QS' mark represents food quality and safety market access, a number representing the plastic category, and a symbol representing the The triangle symbol for recycling. Only with these three symbols can it be a qualified product.”

On March 20, after an interview, Dong Jinshi asked the waiter at the coffee shop to package it. When the lunch box was brought, he habitually looked at the logo on the bottom of the lunch box: there was no QS certification, no plastic variety mark, only the two letters "WD", Dong Jinshi said, which is usually the abbreviation of the name of the manufacturer.

"Typical fake product." Dong Jinshi looked at it carefully and smiled, "I know this company. They once said they wanted one of my legs."

Soon, he turned around and asked the waiter to bring a few more lunch boxes, and then carefully put away the "evidence" he had just obtained. "When this lawsuit is decided, I will sue this hotel again. If we do this a few more times, maybe this industry will be better."