Feasibility Study on the Use of Probabilistic Migration Modeling in Support of Exposure Assessment from Food Contact Materials

Abstract

The use of probabilistic approaches in exposure assessments of contaminants migrating from food packages is of increasing interest but the lack of concentration or migration data is often referred as a limitation. Data accounting for the variability and uncertainty that can be expected in migration, for example, due to heterogeneity in the packaging system, variation of the temperature along the distribution chain, and different time of consumption of each individual package, are required for probabilistic analysis. The objective of this work was to characterize quantitatively the uncertainty and variability in estimates of migration. A Monte Carlo simulation was applied to a typical solution of the Fick's law with given variability in the input parameters. The analysis was performed based on experimental data of a model system (migration of Irgafos 168 from polyethylene into isooctane) and illustrates how important sources of variability and uncertainty can be identified in order to refine analyses. For long migration times and controlled conditions of temperature the affinity of the migrant to the food can be the major factor determining the variability in the migration values (more than 70% of variance). In situations where both the time of consumption and temperature can vary, these factors can be responsible, respectively, for more than 60% and 20% of the variance in the migration estimates. The approach presented can be used with databases from consumption surveys to yield a true probabilistic estimate of exposure.

Consumer exposure to phthalates from paper packaging: an integrated approach

“…In those conditions, 1 month of migration time yields to the maximum (equilibrium) concentration of DBP as can be seen through a simple simulation using the model parameters given. In that range of concentration, considering different product shelflife would not affect the exposure estimates (Poças et al, 2010). Furthermore, some of the food packaging systems used presented a primary package made of a better barrier material than paper.…”

“…process and its use in exposure assessments has been proposed (Vitrac & Leblanc, 2007;Poças, 2010). This approach was followed here using the Weibull kinetic model proposed to simulate concentration data of dibutyl-phthalate (DBP) in foods packaged in cellulosic materials (Poças, 2009).…”

A regression-based model to predict chemical migration from packaging to food

“…Finally, similarly to the PMM of migration, the LMM predicts an increase in the migrated fraction for higher temperatures and longer contact times. Higher temperatures imply higher diffusion rates for the migrant from the packaging into the food [22,54], while longer contact times give chemicals a longer time-window to migrate [35,55].…”

Migration Modeling as a Valuable Tool for Exposure Assessment and Risk Characterization of Polyethylene Terephthalate Oligomers

“…In addition to regulatory compliance, migration testing can also be used in support of exposure assessment and risk characterization for non-regulated substances such as non-intentionally added substances (NIAS) [7,8]. However, experimental migration testing is time-consuming, inflexible with respect to temperature variations and packaging system heterogeneity, and in many cases even impossible due to technical or analytical limitations, resulting in the lack of migration data for many NIAS [9][10][11][12].…”