Projectname:
Systematising available knowledge and the resulting research needs regarding migration from paper and board into real foods in comparison to simulants
Workgroup: Compliance of packaging material
Research Partner and Scientific Guidance:
Financing: IVLV e. V.
Duration: 2022
Evaluation of food regulatory conformity of paper and board is usually based on extraction procedures that may overestimate the migration onto real foods due to strong interactions of the used test simulants with papers and board, especially swelling effects. This bears the risk that products made of paper or board may be falsely disqualified as non-conform.
Several publications tackle the migration from paper and board especially onto dry food and adsorbents as simulants (mainly Tenax®). Depending on the application and the substances, migration onto Tenax or Porapak was found highly overestimating or non-overestimating migration onto food. Furthermore, approaches for mathematical modelling of migration from paper and board onto dry foods following Fickian laws like those for plastic materials were published. These models are based on the results of a restricted number of substances and paper and board types only and do not or only partially consider the influence of e.g. humidity, density or porosity of the paper and vapour pressure of the migration substances. Therefore, despite many publications regarding migration from paper and board, still a general understanding is missing, how to test experimentally and estimate migration theoretically from paper and board in a realistic way without strong overestimation.
The aim of the research project is to screen and assess the numerous publications and data of previous research work regarding the usability for establishing suitable test simulants and mathematical models for migration evaluation. Additional experimental work shall investigate the migration at fatty and humid contact onto real foods complementing the dialkylketon study (IVLV project Migration from paper and board 2021) using recycled board and e.g. phthalates as target migrating substances. Thus, a more volatile substance class is additionally used for investigating the contact with those foods. Both topics form an improved starting point for a planned publicly financed larger research project with the aim to establish suitable experimental and theoretical methods for a realistic determination or simulation of migration from paper and board onto real foods. The results will be summarised in a publication.
