Chemical migration from food packaging

Castle, Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food, York 

The modem packaging industry can be traced back as far as 1810 when the French pharmacist Nicolas Appert invented the canning process. Modem civilisation requires a continuous and reliable supply of safe and high-quality food. Since unprotected food is liable to deteriorate rapidly, it is necessary to provide appropriate protection and, although many other protective methodologies are currently in use, a prime feature of modem food protection is packaging. 

Food and beverages can be very chemically aggressive milieux and may interact strongly with materials that they touch. Collectively, they are as good as many of the solvents used in a chemistry laboratory. For example, food acids can corrode metals, fats and oils can swell and leach plastics, and beverages can disintegrate unprotected paper and cartonboard. In fact, no food contact material is completely inert and so it is possible for their chemical constituents to 

Food contact materials in general can be classified into ten main categories. As even a cursory glance around any supermarket will confirm the first four categories in this list dominate the packaging of our food in the developed world. 

Any chemical migration into food is important because it can have two impacts on the food  

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Chemical migration from food packaging adhesives... 

LAWSON G (1994) Migration from boil-in-bag laminates, in Watson D and Meah M (eds) Food Science Reviews Vol 2 Chemical Migration from Food Packaging, Ellis Horwood Ltd, 77-107. 

P.A. Tice and I. Cooper in Food Science Reviews, Volume 2, Chemical Migration from Food Packaging, Eds., D.H. Watson and M.N. Meah, Ellis Horwood, Chichester, UK, 1994, p.3-33. 

Chemical migration from secondary packaging into foods 395... 

Butylated hydroxytoluene (BHT) is an antioxidant commonly utilized as an additive in food and in rubber and plastic products. Its chemical migration from plastic packaging into the package s content has been shown [82]. A method for the determination of BHT in bottled water by means of SPME-GC-MS was developed [83]. The method was also appUed to evaluate the presence of BHT in mineral and mineralized bottled drinking water and it appeared in seven out of fifteen samples studied. The maximum observed concentration was 38 p.g L. All studied plastic bottles were made of PET. The PDMS fiber was exposed to 15 mL aliquots for 30 minutes at ambient temperature and under magnetic stirring. Relative standard deviation was 4.3% and the limit of detection was 4.2 pg L ... 

Chemical migration from packaging into food... 

Research on chemical migration from other types or components of packaging material - e.g. glass, wood, cork, coatings, adhesives - has been carried out sporadically. There is now a concerted UK programme to study chemical migration from these so that problems can be identified and dealt with in a consistent way (Working Party on Chemical Contaminants from Food Contact Materials and Articles, 1999). 

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