Acrylonitrile in food contact materials - two different legislative approaches: comparison of direct determination with indirect evaluation using migration into food simulants

Abstract

Polymers with acrylonitrile monomer (ANM) as a component -for example acrylonitrile butadiene styrene (ABS) and styrene-acrylonitrile (SAN) -are used for packages and household articles designed for foodstuffs. During the production of acrylonitrile copolymers, a small fraction of unreacted acrylonitrile monomer becomes physically entrapped in the polymer and can migrate slowly during storage or the contact with food or other materials (Gawell 1979 In this study, the comparison was carried out of two different legislative approaches for acrylonitrile content assessment in food contact materials based on the former analysis using gas chromatography with nitrogen-phosphorous detection, and the recent evaluation using acrylonitrile migration into food simulants -distilled water, 3% acetic acid, 10% ethanol, and 95% ethanol, based on liquid chromatography with ultraviolet detection. Different samples were tested: 7 kitchen device parts and 16 acrylonitrile-butadiene-styrene and styrene-acrylonitrile granulates. The level of acrylonitrile content in founded polymer mass was in the range from 0.4 to 25.1 mg/kg in the case of kitchen device parts, and from 6.2 to 283.9 mg/kg in the case of granulates. The highest migration of acrylonitrile in food simulants for kitchen device parts and granulates was found to be 5.2 µg/dm 2 (3% acetic acid) and 9.6 µg/dm 2 (95% ethanol), respectively. A correlation of the results obtained by two different methodologies was tested, but no evident relation was found between acrylonitrile content in the polymer mass and its migrations into food simulants. Based on the realised experiments, no equivalence of the approaches compared was proved.

Evaluation and modeling of acrylonitrile migration from polypropylene for food packaging

“…The results obtained are similar to those reported by Poustkova et al. (2007), where the concentration of acrylonitrile monomer migrated from ABS pellets, and styrene–acrylonitrile copolymer in water and ethanol (10% v/v) was between 0.02 and 2.32 µg dm −2 at 40°C. In the case of this study, the maximum migration measured was 0.026 µg dm −2 for the two simulants at 44°C.…”

Why Biopolymer Packaging Materials are Better

“…Biopolymers were mainly developed with the main intention of environment-friendliness but also, its competitive properties (temperature resistance, thermal conductance, oxygen transmission rate tensile strength and water vapor transmission rate) compared to other materials as a thermal packaging are excellent. Meanwhile, the bulk material abundance, renewability, and recyclability are providing better colors to biopolymers [4], [16]. For this research work analysis industrial cellulose bag package materials have been used since they have a very low modified structure composition as concerned in the analysis.…”