Safety aspects related to refillable plastic bottles

4 Safety aspects related to refillable plastic bottles 

Due to the underlying principle of a plastic bottle refill system, i.e. circulation between bottler and consumer, and due to the intrinsic interactivity of plastics with contacting chemicals, a special and possibly even unique situation arises concerning 

As a consequence of this state of the art, the need and justification for establishing a conventional method for reproducible inertness testing of refill-bottle materials was identified in our laboratory a few years ago. In our opinion, a practical, cost-efficient and relatively quick standard test procedure which could also be used by surveillance labs was worth development. Within an European project (Castle 1997, Jetten et al. 1999), an investigation was undertaken to elucidate the feasibility of such a quick test method for refillable PET bottles, with respect to evaluating their inertness concerning the uptake and subsequent release of chemicals and sensory-active compounds. Before starting method development, the following considerations were made and 

The model contaminants used then for this work (Demertzis et al. 1997) have been selected under different aspects  

As a consequence, three sets (A, B and C) each of six model contaminants and a mixture of two chlorinated chemicals strongly interactive with polymers (Set D) were selected (see Table 10-11). 

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