Kathy Van Den Houwe
Scientific Institute of Public Health
Belgium
Title: Migration of photoinitiators from cardboard into dry food: Evaluation of Tenax® as a food simulant
Biography
Biography: Kathy Van Den Houwe
Abstract
Food packaging is becoming increasingly complex in their design and composition. The direct contact, and in many cases the indirect contact, between the food packaging and the food, yield the transfer of relative low molecular weight compounds such as photoinitiators. Photoinitiators are commonly used in the formulation of UV-cured inks for short drying times. Hence, photo-initiators can also be present in recycled materials, even though the packaging itself has not been printed with UV-cured inks. Evaluation of the migration of chemical contaminants in food by recycling is necessary but very challenging due to the complexity of the matrix and the wide variety of foods that need to be analysed. When a food contact material is not yet in contact with food, the contact material can be checked for compliance using food simulants. In this contribution, a kinetic study was performed to evaluate the performance of Tenax® as a food simulant for the migration of photoinitiators from paper and board towards cereals by comparing the simulation according to Regulation (EU) No 10/2011 against the actual migration into cereals. Conventional migration testing resulted in different migration patterns for different photoinitiators, which were probably caused by the presence or absence of certain functional groups. Real conditions for the migration of photoinitiators towards cereals were seriously overestimated by the conventional migration testing. These overestimations can be reduced by applying a contact temperature of 40°C. Furthermore, changing the pore size of Tenax® had no impact on the migration of photoinitiators.