Role of gas chromatography–single quadrupole mass spectrometry in the identification of compounds migrating from polypropylene-based food contact plastics

Abstract

The migration of volatile and semi-volatile substances from commercially available polypropylene-based food contact materials was studied. Both intentionally and non-intentionally added substances – among them degradation products and contaminants of common additives – were identified. The efficiency and the reliability of tentative identification with GC-EI-QMS measurements followed by NIST mass spectral library searches were also evaluated. In addition to the 24 migrated n-alkanes, 46 compounds were tentatively identified with GC-EI-QMS. Of these, 31 were confirmed with both GC-EI-TOFMS and analytical reference materials. In four cases, however, the tentative identification proved to be wrong. Two compounds were identified despite not being included in the library. Our results prove that GC-EI-QMS and the NIST mass spectral library combined are powerful in the identification of compounds migrating from food contact plastics. But these same results also prove that both reliability and productivity can be improved with GC-EI-TOFMS measurements and consideration of linear retention indices.