Rules that affect what you can buy
The FDA revoked 23 phthalate permissions in 2022 — because industry had already stopped using them. Nine remain authorised. A May 2026 proposal is the first real sign of that changing.
You will see “phthalate-free” on kitchen products, and you will see headlines saying the FDA banned phthalates. Both are misleading in the same direction.
The FDA revoked authorisation for 23 phthalates in 2022. It kept nine. And the reason it revoked those 23 was not that they were found unsafe — it was that industry had already stopped using them.
The FDA revoked authorisation for 23 phthalates plus two related plasticisers, 25 substances in total. The petition asking for this came from the Flexible Vinyl Alliance — an industry body — on the grounds that these uses had been abandoned.
That is the mechanism worth understanding. It is a housekeeping action removing permissions nobody was using. It is not a safety determination, and it did not take a single substance out of a product that was actually on shelves.
On the same day, the FDA denied a separate petition from public health and environmental groups asking it to revoke the remaining phthalates as an unsafe class, and issued a request for data on the eight still authorised as plasticisers.
The FDA formally denied the food-additive petition covering 28 phthalates, saying the evidence did not demonstrate the uses were unsafe. The petitioning groups’ response is here.
Environmental groups filed formal objections to both the 2022 rule and the 2023 denial. The FDA rejected them and reaffirmed its position. A legal summary is here; the Food Packaging Forum covered it. The agency had received roughly 24,000 public comments on the 2022 request for information.
This is the genuinely new part, and most pages answering this question predate it.
On 12 May 2026 the FDA finalised an enhanced systematic process for post-market assessment of chemicals in food. Then on 27 May 2026 it released a scientific evaluation proposing to group four phthalates — DEHP, DCHP, DIOP and DINP — for cumulative risk assessment, on the basis that they share a reproductive-toxicity mechanism. The comment period was extended to 26 July 2026.
That matters because it is precisely the class-based approach the FDA had refused in 2023. It is a change of method, not yet a change of rules.
As of September 2026, no phthalate authorisation has been restricted or revoked as a result of the 2026 proposal. Nine phthalates remain permitted for food-contact use. Anyone telling you the FDA has banned phthalates from food packaging is describing the 2022 housekeeping action and leaving out what it actually did.
Phthalates are plasticisers — they make rigid plastics flexible. So the exposure is concentrated in soft, bendy plastic rather than hard plastic:
They are generally not in rigid polypropylene, glass, or steel. And note the asymmetry that runs through this whole subject: the largest single dietary source in most studies is processed and packaged food itself, not the container you decant it into at home.
Not much, for the same structural reason “BPA-free” is worth little. There is no certification behind it, no required testing, and no register. It is a claim a manufacturer writes.
It is also often trivially true — a stainless steel container was never going to contain a plasticiser, and printing “phthalate-free” on it is marketing rather than information. We dock claim-precision points for exactly this pattern on the scored list: a claim that is true but carries no work.
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New scores, brands that finally answered, and any rule change that affects what you can buy. The list is not open yet — email us and we will add you when it is.