Mr Frank Opoku Agyapong, the Executive Director, of Peace and Violence Free Advocacy Foundation, has called for a ban on the use of plastic for packaging alcoholic drinks in the country.
He emphasized that the practice was harmful because petrol-chemicals which are used in the manufacturing of plastics contained a lot of lethal substances.
Mr Agyapong said according to research because petrol-chemicals are widely available and cheaper than other raw materials the plastic manufacturers did not consider the health effect of humans and prefer the raw material.
The Executive Director of the Foundation, which works to promote the wellbeing of the youth, and violence-free election in 2016, made the call in an interview with the Ghana News Agency (GNA) in Sunyani on Thursday.
Mr Agyapong noted that alcoholic content of most of the locally distilled beverages were high which make chemicals in the plastic to easily migrate into the alcohol thereby poisoning most of the drinks.
He explained that in addition to creating safety problems during production, many chemical additives that give plastic product desirable performance properties also had negative environmental and human health effects.
Among these effects, included endocrine disruption, which could lead to cancers, birth defects, immune system suppression and developmental problems in children, Mr Agyapong added.
The Executive Director emphasized that it is internationally unacceptable to package or bottle alcoholic beverage with plastic materials as its adverse effect on consumers were immeasurable.
But Mr Agyapong regretted that almost all the alcoholic producing companies in the country were using plastic materials for packaging and called on the Food and Drugs Authority to ban the practice.
Source: GhanaWeb
