Specific migration testing with alternative fatty food simulants.

Abstract

Many additives used in plastics materials and articles intended for food contact are expected to be assigned specific migration limits (SMLs) in a future amendment to EC Directive 90/128/EEC. In order to demonstrate compliance with these restrictions, specific migration tests will need to be performed on the finished plastics packaging using foods or the appropriate EC food simulants. Owing to the involatile and lipophilic nature of many of these additives, their analysis in the conventional fatty food simulant, olive oil, presents technical difficulties. One way of overcoming these difficulties would be to use a simple solvent alternative to olive oil as has been proposed for overall migration testing. The objective of this work is to compare specific migration data obtained using olive oil with alternative fat simulants iso-octane and 95% ethanol, to find out if similar results are obtained and identify the most appropriate alternative simulant to use for future testing. Good agreement with the olive oil migration data was obtained using 95% ethanol (equivalent exposure conditions) for both of the additives studied in polyolefins. For the polystyrene materials studied it is unlikely that the SMLs for the two additives would be exceeded, and in these cases iso-octane (1.5 h at 60 degrees C) could be used as a rapid 'alternative test'.