Comprehensive analysis of migrates from food-packaging materials: a challenge.
The premise is put forward that present European regulation of food-packaging materials does not provide the assessment for safety corresponding to the opinion of toxicologists that migrants ingested in amounts exceeding a threshold of 1.5 microg day(-1) should be identified and toxicologically evaluated. Many substances that migrate (the large majority of the components migrating from can coatings) are neither starting point materials, nor obvious derivatives therefrom, and are, therefore, not covered by existing systems based on positive lists. Safety presupposes the comprehensive analysis of the migrating substances, ultimately to the limits in terms of concentration and molecular weight considered to he of toxicological concern. This is a new analytical challenge. In this paper, expected problems are discussed, leading to the conclusion that it will be difficult to achieve comprehensive analysis down to the concentrations presently considered safe, but that systematic work should start to define the possibilities and limitations of analytical chemistry for a migrate-oriented coating legislation.
Grob
K
K
Official Food Control Authority of the Canton of Zurich, Switzerland. koni@grob.org
D005062:European Union; D005504:Food Analysis / Q000331:legislation & jurisprudence / Q000379:methods; D005506:Food Contamination / Q000032:analysis* / Q000331:legislation & jurisprudence; D018857:Food Packaging / Q000331:legislation & jurisprudence*; D006801:Humans; D007881:Legislation, Food; D008452:Maximum Allowable Concentration