The application of a predictive migration model for evaluating the compliance of plastic materials with European food regulations†

Abstract

A model for estimating the migration of organic substances from plastic materials into foodstuffs has been previously developed. The use of this model allows a shift away from expensive and time consuming migration analysis in foods to much simpler and more economic compositional analysis in the material. Starting with toxicologically-based specific migration values, like the over 400 specific migration limit values for organic substances listed in the European Union's Synoptic Document No. 7, the corresponding allowable maximum quantity limits of these substances in the plastic were calculated. The amount of migration that can occur depends on many different factors such as the natures of the plastic, substance and food, contact time and temperature conditions, material thickness and number of uses. These factors can result in a variety of situations which must be taken into account in the estimation of migration. The handling of the migration estimation model is demonstrated for several practical migration scenarios using a series of case studies.

Migration of two antioxidants from packaging into a solid food and into Tenax®

“…Migration processes from packaging materials into food are commonly assumed to be diffusion processes described by the Fick's 2nd law which may in some circumstances be represented by the following Equation (Baner, Brandsch, Franz, & Piringer, 1996):…”

Antimicrobial packaging system for minimally processed fruit

“…Temperature played an important role in the antimicrobial activity of the active films containing volatile agents. It is well-established that the diffusion coefficient of the active substances increases with the temperature (Baner et al, 1996;Muriel-Galet et al, 2015;Suppakul et al, 2011a). This effect was also observed in the release test carried out in section 4.3.1, where the release of citral, hexanal and linalool was enhanced with an increase of temperature (higher D values).…”

Experimental direct evaluation of functional barriers in PET recycled bottles: comparison of migration behaviour of mono‐ and multilayers

“…As a consequence, migration into ethanol was expected to be mainly dependent on the diffusivity of the surrogates, which itself was known to be more or less a decreasing function of the molar volume. 6,31,32 This was indeed the case, as we found the following sequences.…”