Paper

The real issue in paper food packaging was PFAS used as grease-proofing agents, meaning substances applied to paper and paperboard to stop grease, oil or water leaking through. FDA says these ceased to be sold into the US market in February 2024, completing a long withdrawal: long-chain C8 compounds went between 2011 and 2016 with FDA revoking the remaining authorisations, three manufacturers agreed in July 2020 to a three-year phase-out of short-chain 6:2 FTOH grease-proofing agents after FDA found that 6:2 FTOH biopersists and is more toxic than the substance previously used to model it, and the last remaining manufacturers stopped in 2023. In January 2025 FDA declared 35 related food-contact notifications no longer effective and has built a screening method to police the market. Two honest caveats: this covered grease barriers, so the categories implicated were wrappers, bowls, boxes and bags rather than filters or parchment; and a fluorochemical oil repellent is still listed in 21 CFR 176.170, because the withdrawal ran through the notification system rather than by deleting regulation text.

The chlorine-and-dioxin worry, by contrast, is largely a solved problem presented as a live one. It was real: chlorine bleaching produced dioxins, and a 1989 US Office of Technology Assessment review reported measured dioxin at 2.2 to 6.6 ppt TEQ in the coffee filters tested. But the same review recorded that the industry risk assessment, assuming a punishing 65 to 90 percent migration into the brew, put the level corresponding to a one-in-a-million risk at 20 ppt for average and 11 ppt for heavy coffee drinkers. Measured filter levels were already several times below that, and EPA's 1998 Cluster Rule then regulated TCDD, TCDF, AOX and chloroform from bleached kraft mills and drove the industry onto chlorine dioxide. Choosing unbleached paper today is a reasonable preference, not a safety fix.

Wet-strength resin sits in between. Filters and tea bags are commonly treated with polyamide-epichlorohydrin resin so they do not fall apart in hot water, and this is explicitly authorised rather than a loophole: FDA lists multiple PAE resins in 21 CFR 176.170 at limits from 0.5 to 2.5 percent of dry fiber, and Germany's BfR Recommendation XXXVI/1, which governs hot filter papers specifically, caps wet-strength agents at 4 percent of dry fiber and sets extract limits on the byproducts that matter, requiring 1,3-dichloro-2-propanol to be undetectable at a 2 microgram per litre limit and holding 3-monochloro-1,2-propanediol under 12 micrograms per litre. It is a cured thermoset crosslinked into the fiber at low single-digit percent, not a plastic liner.

Paper is where heat meets the contact path most often in a plastic-free kitchen, and mostly it is fine: a filter or a tea bag is cellulose holding boiling water for a minute or two, and cellulose does not melt or leach. The coatings are what carry a temperature rating. Parchment gets its release property from a silicone surface coating, which FDA authorises for paper and paperboard under its high-temperature conditions of use, and a typical supermarket parchment is sold as oven-safe up to 425 F; above its rating the paper itself scorches and browns. This is also where the distinction from wax paper matters, since wax paper is not oven paper and its coating will smoke. Polyethylene-lined paper cups are the other hot-path case, and there the plastic, not the paper, is what a hot drink sits against.

Unbleached paper is tan or brown and usually says so; white paper has been bleached, and the meaningful label is whether it is TCF, totally chlorine free, or oxygen-bleached, versus conventional. Coatings are the thing to look for and the thing least often labelled. A grease-resistant wrapper or moulded bowl is the category that historically carried PFAS; a paper cup with a glossy interior that will not tear cleanly is polyethylene-lined; wax paper feels waxy and is not oven-rated. Parchment is the one worth knowing in detail, because three different releases are sold under the same word and only one is usually named on the box. Genuine vegetable parchment is made by acid-treating the sheet itself, so there is no coating at all. Silicone-coated parchment is smooth and slightly slick on both faces, and brands that use it tend to say so because it costs more. The third is Quilon, a chromium(III) fatty-acid complex release treatment that is still commercially supplied and is cheaper than silicone, which is why unlabelled parchment is a reasonable bet for it - and its FDA listing is worth knowing: the myristo and stearato chromic chloride complexes appear in 21 CFR 176.180, components of paper in contact with dry food, and do not appear at all in 176.170, the aqueous and fatty foods list that covers silicone release coatings. Parchment's whole job is hot fatty food. If the box does not say silicone or vegetable parchment, ask. Independent lab testing is worth more than packaging copy here, because an organic-fluorine screen detects a PFAS treatment that no label discloses. If a brand says only "natural" or "plastic-free paper," ask three specific questions: bleached or unbleached and by what process, is there a wet-strength resin, and is there any grease, wet or release coating.

Plain uncoated paper, including used coffee filters and grounds, composts at home and is the least troublesome disposal in this whole category; wet-strength resin at a few percent does not change that in practice. Silicone-coated parchment is not recyclable - the coating is why - but it is not automatically a composting dead end either, and the two questions have different answers. If You Care's parchment carries TUV Austria OK Compost HOME and OK Compost INDUSTRIAL (EN 13432) certification, so a silicone release coating can pass a home-compost standard; notably, the same brand's BPI certificate covers its coffee filters and several other products but not its parchment. Treat that as a per-product certification to look for, not a property of parchment: unbranded supermarket parchment carries no such certification and nothing about the category earns the benefit of the doubt. Polyethylene-lined cups and grease-coated wrappers are the genuine dead end: they are neither recyclable in ordinary paper streams nor compostable, and they land in the bin regardless of how paper-like they look.