High Temperature Migration Testing of Indirect Food Additives

摘要

Polymeric materials used in food packaging contain additives and other relatively low molecular weight compounds that may migrate from the packaging during food contact. Efforts to evaluate the extent of migration of indirect food additives are usually based on extraction protocols using food simulation liquids. Although other studies have examined migration processes likely to be encountered with room-temperature and refrigerated foods, the study focused on migration processes with food simulating liquids used for evaluating additive migration during high temperature food contact. A matrix of 88 experiments with 6 radiolabeled-additive olefin polymer combinations was conducted to examine how additive migration was influenced by temperature, time, food simulating liquid and polymer. The study showed that additive migration followed square root of time relationships (until approximately 50% of the additives migrated) over temperatures ranging from 49 deg C up to 135 deg C, diffusion coefficients increased with temperature in an Arrhenius manner, and the amount of migration to aqueous food simulants was 10 to 100 times less than observed with fatty food simulants.