Abstract
The Rapid Alert System for Food and Feed (RASFF) has reported many cases of different UV curing inks components in foodstuffs during the last few years. These contaminants reach foodstuffs mainly by set-off, their principal migration mechanism from the package. Under this premise, this work has tried to characterize the process of migration of two common UV ink components: a photoinitiator (4-Methylbenzophenone) and a coinitiator (Ethyl-4-(dimethylamino) benzoate), from the most common plastic material used in food packaging low-density polyethylene (LDPE) into six different food simulants. The migration kinetics tests were performed at four different common storage temperatures, obtaining the key migration parameters for both molecules: the coefficients of diffusion and partition. The migration process was highly dependent on the storage conditions, the photoinitiator properties and the pH of the foodstuff.
Highlights
IntroductionThe addition of these compounds enables the desired properties; the possible interactions between the packaging and the foodstuff should be considered from a food safety concern point of view
In order to improve their quality and properties, most food packaging incorporates different additives into its structure as plasticizers, thermal and light stabilizers, slip additives or antioxidants. The addition of these compounds enables the desired properties; the possible interactions between the packaging and the foodstuff should be considered from a food safety concern point of view. These interactions include mass transfer processes, commonly known as migration, which is defined as: “ mass transfer from an external source into food by submicroscopic processes” and it depends on several factors that can be summarized into four main factors: food, polymer, migrant and physical conditions: time and temperature [1,2]
In our case a low-density polyethylene (LDPE) sheet, is suspended in a stirred solution with a finite volume, a possible solution for a Polymer-Food system could be shown by Equation (2), which expresses the amount of migrant released from the polymer (P) into food (F) at time t: [4,20,21,22,23]
Summary
The addition of these compounds enables the desired properties; the possible interactions between the packaging and the foodstuff should be considered from a food safety concern point of view These interactions include mass transfer processes, commonly known as migration, which is defined as: “ mass transfer from an external source into food by submicroscopic processes” and it depends on several factors that can be summarized into four main factors: food, polymer, migrant and physical conditions: time and temperature [1,2]. There is another wide group of compounds that could migrate from the food packaging: monomers, oligomers and their reaction products [3] All of these molecules could reach the foods and depending on the migrant, they could represent a serious hazard for consumers’ health.
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