Photoinitiators: a food safety review

Abstract

Ultraviolet light printing inks are considered safer than the classical inks; however, despite being on the outer surface of the packaging material, their components can migrate into foodstuffs and can give rise to contamination. Photoinitiators are a part of the formulation of printing inks, being an important class of migrant, for which there have been more than 100 incidents of contamination of packaged food with photoinitiators reported through Rapid Alert System for Food and Feed (RASFF) alerts in the European Union. In this review the process of photo-polymerisation is explained in depth to provide an insight into the complexity of the process, and the diversity of potential contaminants together with their degradation products. The critical factors affecting the migration process itself are reviewed, together with analytical methods and the current legislation in the European Union and other parts of the world.

Three-Dimensional Printing of Carbamazepine Sustained-Release Scaffold

“…Moreover, the use of photoinitiators for photopolymerization induces free radicals, of which its safety has been questioned. 31 Nozzle deposition system, commonly represented by fused deposition modeling (FDM), is a 3DP technique where a molten thermoplastic polymer filament is extruded by 2 rollers through a high temperature nozzle and thereafter solidifies into the desired pattern on the build plate. The precision and accuracy is not as high as laser writing systems.…”

Liquid chromatography quadrupole time‐of‐flight mass spectrometry identification and determination of tri‐ and hexaaryl chloro imidazoles in sewage sludge

“…The origin of both triarylimidazoles was a matter of concern because (1) they were only detected in the LC–MS files of sludge samples obtained from one out of ten investigated STPs (all of them located in the Northwest of Spain) during year 2014; and (2), to the best of our knowledge, no previous reports of their occurrence in environmental matrices were found. The STP where compounds are noticed receives combined wastewater from a 100 000 inhabitants area, a hospital (serving a population of half a million), a campus University (with several chemical and biomedical research laboratories) and local industries, including electronic and paper printing companies where the arylimidazoles could be potentially employed, accordingly to literature uses . Despite being a local problem, the presence of o‐Cl‐TAI in sludge was a concerning issue given that this compound has been recently classified as genotoxic and carcinogenic in model experiments (http://qsar.food.dtu.dk).…”

“…Compounds involved in this study were first detected in the LC-QTOF-MS files corresponding to methanolic sludge extracts obtained using MSPD as sample preparation technique. In brief, 0.5 g of sludge was dispersed with 2 g of C 18 and packed above a layer of Florisil and PSA (0.5 g each) into a MSPD polypropylene syringe. Methanol (20 ml) was used for extraction of medium and low polarity species, whereas more polar compounds remained retained in the clean-up layer due to electrostatic or anionic exchange interactions with Florisil and PSA, respectively.…”

Optimized Photoinitiator for Fast Two‐Photon Absorption Polymerization of Polyester‐Macromers for Tissue Engineering

“…The conversion of laser light energy into the chemical photoresists must be optimized. [21] One route to avoid the self-scission and to limit diffusion, are bigger initiator molecules (macroinitiators), or cyclic ketones (cyclopentanone based PIs). But, this can cause unknown changes in the material characteristics due to the enhanced concentration of incorporated PI.…”