Use of Tenax® films to demonstrate the migration of chemical contaminants from cardboard into dry food

Abstract

Contaminants in food packaging are a challenge of our time since the packaging material itself has been found to represent a source of food contamination through the migration of substances from it. Before first use, packaging materials destined for the packaging of dry foods can be evaluated by performing migration experiments with the simulant for dry foods, Tenax®. This simulant is commercially available as a powder that is more difficult to handle during the migration experiments. This paper reports the development of a Tenax film. The film can be applied to the cardboard surface to conduct the migration test. After the migration is completed, the film can be easily extracted to determine the concentration of the contaminants in the film. Finally, the performance of the Tenax film was compared with the conventional Tenax powder for the evaluation of 15 model migrants.

Investigation of potential migratables from paper and board food contact materials

“…Next, the samples were extracted and analyzed for various substances. Previous studies on paper and board often indicated the presence of bisphenols, phthalates, photoinitiators and mineral oil ( Biedermann and Grob, 2010 ; Vollmer et al, 2011 ; Fierens et al, 2012 ; Pérez-Palacios et al, 2012 ; Bradley et al, 2013 ; Suciu et al, 2013 ; Zurfluh et al, 2013 ; Pivnenko et al, 2016 ; Van Den Houwe et al, 2016 ; Vápenka et al, 2016 ; Vavrouš et al, 2016 ; Jurek and Leitner, 2017 ; Van Den Houwe et al, 2017 ). Therefore, these substances were targeted in this study.…”

“…Over the past 10 years, paper and board FCM have been studied extensively. Many contaminants, such as phthalates ( Fierens et al, 2012 ; Pivnenko et al, 2016 ; Vápenka et al, 2016 ; Vavrouš et al, 2016 ; Van Den Houwe et al, 2017 ), printing inks ( Bradley et al, 2013 ; Van Den Houwe et al, 2016 ; Vápenka et al, 2016 ; Van Den Houwe et al, 2017 ), bisphenols ( Pérez-Palacios et al, 2012 ; Suciu et al, 2013 ; Jurek and Leitner, 2017 ) as well as mineral oil hydrocarbons (MOH) ( Biedermann and Grob, 2010 ; Dima et al, 2011 ; Vollmer et al, 2011 ; Zurfluh et al, 2013 ; Fengler et al, 2015 ; Pivnenko et al, 2016 ), were often reported in the literature as contaminants. Perez-Palacios et al showed the presence of bisphenol A (BPA) in recycled paper and board hamburger boxes, milk bricks, pizza boxes, and packaging ( Pérez-Palacios et al, 2012 ).…”