Direct Determination of Migrants from Polymers into Foodstuffs

Direct Determination of Migrants from Polymers into Foodstuffs 

Therefore, the subject is not discussed extensively in this book and what follows is not a complete coverage of the subject. Nevertheless it is included here as it may appeal to some commodity packagers as a means of quality control of their product. This, of course, does not exempt the supplier of additives or the food package from attaining the necessary official approvals. 

Phillips [2] described a liquid-liquid extraction of BHT and BHA from vegetable oils. He studied the partition of BHT and BHA between heptane and several common 

propyl gallate and tocopherol can be determined in fats extracted from mayonnaise, biscuits or margarine by TLC on layers (0.5 mm) of silica gel activated at 105 °C for 1 hour. Development is with chloroform, spots are located by spraying the air-dried chromatogram with 10% ethanolic molybdophosphoric acid, and the coloured zones are compared with those of antioxidant standards [4, 5]. 

To determine antioxidants in food oils, Vigneron and Spicht [8] extracted an hexane solution of the oil with 1 % ammonium acetate, 32% aqueous acetonitrile and 48% aqueous acetonitrile to isolate propyl, octyl and dodecyl gallates, respectively. As traces of t-butyl-4-methoxyphenol were also extracted by the last solvent, a hexane solution of another portion of the sample was extracted with 30% water (to remove the gallates) and washed with aqueous ammonia, then the BHA was extracted with 72% aqueous ethanol and the BHT remains in the hexane solution. 

---