Supervisors info:
Χαράλαμπος Προεστός, Επίκουρος Καθηγητής, Τμήμα Χημείας, Εθνικό και Καποδιστριακό Πανεπιστήμιο Αθηνών
Παναγιώτα Μαρκάκη, Αναπληρώτρια Καθηγήτρια, Τμήμα Χημείας, Εθνικό και Καποδιστριακό Πανεπιστήμιο Αθηνών
Αθανάσιος Μαλλούχος, Λέκτορας, Τμήμα Επιστήμης Τροφίμων και Διατροφής του Ανθρώπου, Γεωπονικό Πανεπιστήμιο Αθηνών
Summary:
The use of novel food packaging materials has increased the number of occurring hazards due to the migration from packaging material to food. Commonly, polymers have been investigated for the potential migration of substances. The regulations and the directives of the EU tend to become stricter and great effort has been made to uniformly utilize food simulants and testing conditions for migration studies. Furthermore, the list of hazardous monomers, oligomers, and additives continues to grow in order to comply with HACCP requirements and assure consumers’ safety.
A comprehensive overview of overall migration is presented. Special focus is made on plastic packaging materials which are mostly used as packaging materials globally. However, several substances from plastics have caused great health problems such as bisphenol-A (BPA) in baby bottles. For this reason, Regulation (EU) 321/2011 was issued regarding the restriction of Bisphenol A use in plastic infant feeding bottles. It has to be noticed that, the determination of Bisphenol-A belongs to specific migration experiments which differ from overall migration experiments.
In our study, three methods for overall migration were developed and one of these was validated. In total immersion method the plastic was immersed in a specific glass tube, in cell method the plastic was put in a specific cell for migration tests and in tenax method the plastic was put in specific dishes (petri dishes) to come into contact with the food simulant. The tested samples, were obtained by Yotis S.A company (BOPP, LDPE, PE), by a market place (“intestine”), German reference office (PA) and Fapas proficiency testing provider (Nylon film,PA) and were tested with three different food simulants. Simulant A (10% EtOH), fatty food simulant (95% EtOH) and modified polyphenylene oxide (MPPO-Tenax) were used according to the Regulation (EU) 10/2011.
The intestine showed the highest overall migration (16,6 mg/dm2) among all the materials tested. The three packaging materials provided by Yotis S.A showed no overall migration. In this aspect, validations experiments could not be performed. Most importantly, the lab took part in two different proficiency testing procedure where we succeeded acceptable results in both of them (z’ score < 2).
In conclusion, the results obtained from the present work proved that the reliability of the methods developed as the demands criteria of ISO 17025 were satisfied. Also, this work illustrates the importance of studying overall migration from plastic packaging materials in order to protect the human health and improve the shelf-life of food.
Keywords:
chemical migration, overall migration, plastics packaging materials, total immersion, cell, tenax
