Migration kinetics of fluorescent whitening agents from polyethylene food packaging to food simulants

Abstract

The fluorescent whitening agents (FWAs) could be used in polyethylene (PE) packaging to increase whiteness, little work is done to explore the pollution form PE additives to food. Therefore, this study investigated the migration of FWAs from PE food packaging to a fatty food simulant (corn oil) and aqueous ethanol food simulant. Using the determined migration data, both a Crank monolayer migration model based on Fick’s second law and a Weibull migration model were established for the FWAs. We compared the applicability of the two models to the migration tendencies of the FWAs. Both models could describe the migration behaviors of the FWAs into corn oil, the Weibull model predictions were closer to the actual migration trends. The migration behaviors of the FWAs into 95% ethanol could only be described by Crank model. In the Weibull model, the values of the parameters τ and β were positively correlated with temperature and negatively correlated with the thickness of the food packaging. In the Crank model, the partition coefficient values were positively correlated with the boiling points and negatively correlated with the polarity values. The storage conditions of the food including temperature, the thickness of PE had a tremendous impact on the migration of the FWAs in the PE. We hope this study can promote a deeper understanding of additive pollution from packaging materials to food.