Migration into Food

Projectname:
Investigations about the real Migration of packaging Components into Food in Comparison with simulant Tests with Regard to the planned Updating of the EU-Directive 85/572

Workgroup: Compliance of packaging material

Spokesman of IVLV-Project team: Dr. H. Onusseit, Henkel
Research institution: FABES, Munich/Fraunhofer IVV, Freising
Scientific guidance: Dr. O. Piringer/Dr. R. Franz

Financing: IVLV
Project duration: 2002 – 2003

During the contact of food with its packaging migration processes of packaging components into the food take place. The criteria of these mass transfers are meanwhile well known and allow in many case theoretical estimations of the migrating amounts of specific substances. For these estimations as well as for migration measurements simulants are used instead of real food.

The EU-Directive 85/572, which was adopted in the year 1985, groups all possibly packed foods into different food groups and also specifies the simulants to use for packaging tests. Furthermore it describes reduction factors for tests with simulant D (olive oil) and cases where migration testing is not necessary as for example packages for dry products. But with the knowledge of today the Directive contains a lot of unsureties especially at the correlation of simulant tests with the migration into real foods.

Aim of the planned project was therefore a migration investigation with a representative selection of food. During the first year migration kinetics out of a PE-film with defined Diphenylbutadien-concentration were measured at different temperatures into simulants (10 %, 50 % and 95 % ethanol as well as olive oil) and some foods with different fat content (orange-softdrink, skim milk, whole milk, butter). Comparing the experimental data with the estimated migration values it could be demonstrated that food has to be regarded as a multi-phase-system for the migration estimation. For example milk has to be seen as a fat-in-water-emulsion and also the orange-softdrink showed the behaviour of an aqueous phase with dispersed etheric oils.

For the year 2003 investigations with further milk-products (buttermilk, cheese) as well as with meat and some dry products are planned.

Documents