MIGRATION STUDIES OF CHEMICAL ADDITIVES FROM FOOD PACKAGING POLYMERS INTO MILK AND GHEE
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Date
2022
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Publisher
ICAR-NDRI, KARNAL
Abstract
Polymers are commonly used in food packaging applications and varieties of
chemical compounds, such as starting materials, additives, etc. are added during
their manufacture. Migration of compounds from packaging materials into food
could be a potential means of contamination which possess serious human health
risk. In order to assess food contact materials safety, analytical methodologies to
identify potential migrants are required. Hence, physico-chemical characterization
of the secured 49 packaging materials was carried out; followed by optimization
of solvent and analytical conditions to bring about an exhaustive and rapid
extraction of chemical additives from packaging materials. Spectroscopic studies
demonstrated that blend of LDPE: o-/b-LLDPE & Nylon 6: LDPE + o-/b LLDPE
are widely used for packaging of milk and ghee respectively. Chloroform:
methanol (1:1) was screened as suitable extraction solvent with focused ultra
sound liquid solid extraction (FULSE) as the superior method for additives
extraction from packaging films. Frequently occurring 10 chemical compounds
with substantial relative abundance were picked for quantification in multiple
reaction monitoring (MRM) mode. Thereafter, overall and specific migration
studies of the procured packaging samples were carried out. Extraction
methodologies for quantification of the identified migrants from milk and ghee
were developed and validated in terms of linearity, % recovery, repeatability, and
limits of detection and quantification. Spiked recoveries varied between 88.5 and
102.64%, and relative standard deviation (RSD) was in the range of 0.21–6.53%.
Acetyl tributylcitrate was the highest detected compound in both milk and ghee at
the concentration of 16 ppm and 56.57 ppm respectively, followed by
Irganox®1076 and Irgafos®168. All quantified migrants were present below the
prescribed SMLs by EU 10/2011. To understand the behaviour of additives and
factors influencing migration, kinetics studies were carried at 4℃ and 25℃ in milk
and at 25℃ in ghee. Diffusion coefficients (Dp) of migrants were calculated using
Brandsch equation and FDA model, wherein significantly different values of Dp
were observed.