NIAS – Feasibility study

Migration assessments of non-intentionally-added-substances (NIAS) from materials for food packaging gets more and more demanded by enforcement authorities and food producers. The EU Plastics Regulation No 10/2011 states that non-intentionally-added substances need to be assessed according to internationally recognised scientific principles on risk assessment (Art. 19). The related Union Guidance ‘as regards information in the supply chain’ requires on every stage of the supply chain conformity work for NIAS.

The 10 ppb migration limit which is used in many cases for NIAS evaluation, is derived from the limit for non-approved substances behind a functional barrier in the EU Plastics Regulation or the limit for non-evaluated substances in the Council of Europe Resolution for printing inks. This limit is already an analytical challenge. Actually, lower limits are in discussion which in most cases will not be analytically testable in migration solutions. An alternative is the determination of concentrations in the materials and estimation of migration via mathematical modelling.

In a feasibility study, various materials shall be investigated regarding NIAS. From the contents in the materials, migrations shall be estimated via mathematical modelling and verified by experimental migration tests.